1inch’s Sergej Kunz Urges Institutions to Build on DeFi Instead of Recreating It - Crypto Economy

TL;DR

• Sergej Kunz says institutions are wasting resources by rebuilding DeFi systems that already work instead of partnering with mature onchain infrastructure.
• He points to 1inch’s scale, including routing across more than 400 decentralized exchanges on 13 networks and over $800 billion in cumulative swap volume.
• Kunz also argues AI should improve integration and workflows, while autonomous financial decisions should still remain in human hands inside DeFi products and institutional workflows.

Traditional financial firms keep talking about moving onchain, but Sergej Kunz argues many are approaching DeFi the wrong way from the start. His central critique is that institutions are spending heavily to rebuild systems that already function onchain instead of using infrastructure that is mature, liquid, and already in production. That view turns the current institutional push into something more revealing than a technology story. It becomes a test of whether legacy finance is ready to adopt open infrastructure, or whether it still feels compelled to recreate every layer inside its own walls, even after years of public blockchain experimentation by major firms.

For Kunz, the fragmentation is not just inefficient; it misses the practical point of DeFi altogether. He is urging institutions to stop working in silos and start partnering with protocols that have already solved core problems around execution, routing, and efficiency. In 1inch’s case, that argument is backed by scale: the protocol routes trades across more than 400 decentralized exchanges on 13 networks and has processed more than $800 billion in cumulative swap volume. In his telling, the rails are not theoretical anymore. They already exist, and institutions should be building on top of them.


The bigger opportunity is integration, not duplication

That same logic shapes his view on artificial intelligence. Kunz sees AI as useful where it helps developers integrate faster and work more efficiently, but he does not view it as essential to core trade execution that is already heavily optimized. The distinction matters because it pushes back against the idea that every future-facing product must revolve around autonomous decision-making. For now, he appears to place more value on AI as an operational layer around DeFi rather than as the actor making financial choices inside it.

That caution becomes even clearer when the conversation turns to autonomous agents. Kunz draws a firm line at systems that decide for users, arguing that DeFi still rests on personal responsibility and informed action rather than delegated judgment. The tension he describes runs through the whole sector: the push toward smoother automation on one side, and the insistence that users remain accountable on the other. His message to institutions is ultimately blunt. The technology is ready, the liquidity is deep, and the smarter move is not rebuilding DeFi. It is finally learning to build on it.