1inch has named Holly Atkinson as its new Chief Product and Technology Officer, a freshly created role designed to accelerate the launch of Aqua, the protocol’s shared liquidity layer. The appointment, announced on July 7, signals that 1inch is betting big on solving one of DeFi’s most persistent headaches: liquidity fragmentation.

Atkinson brings experience from The Sandbox and a background as a blockchain architect and Ethereum R&D engineer.

What Aqua actually does

Aqua is 1inch’s answer to liquidity fragmentation. The protocol is designed as a shared liquidity layer that lets users maintain a single wallet balance while executing multiple strategies simultaneously, without lockup periods and without giving up self-custody. The key technical innovation is something called the Shared Liquidity Amplification Coefficient, or SLAC, which is intended to boost capital efficiency by allowing the same underlying liquidity to support different activities at once.

Developer access to Aqua opened on November 17, 2025, with SDKs and GitHub repositories made available for community engagement. The full public UI launch is targeted for 2026, which means Atkinson’s first major deliverable is getting Aqua into the hands of actual users rather than just developers.

Why this hire matters now

The protocol recently integrated with Robinhood Chain to enable trading of tokenized real-world assets, a category that includes tokenized versions of bonds, equities, and commodities.

Sergej Kunz, co-founder of 1inch, pointed to Atkinson’s combination of engineering depth and product vision as the reason for the appointment.

The creation of a CPTO role, rather than separate CPO and CTO positions, means a single leader oversees both product strategy and core routing infrastructure.

The bigger picture for DeFi liquidity

1inch has processed over $800 billion in aggregate transaction volume historically. What makes Aqua’s approach distinct is the SLAC mechanism, which attempts to let the same pool of capital serve multiple purposes rather than requiring separate allocations for each strategy.