Anton Bukov, co-founder of decentralized exchange aggregator 1inch, said the company fired him in late November 2025 and that he is now building a new infrastructure startup called Second Tier.
Bukov disclosed the split in a statement shared with The Defiant ahead of a public announcement set for Thursday. He said he remains a 1inch co-founder and still owns 50% of the company, but no longer takes part in its operations.
He said he now has no role in, and no oversight of, the protocol’s product architecture or security, the technical areas he previously ran.
Bukov says the break was about strategy, communication and leadership
1inch had not responded to The Defiant’s request for comment by press time.
“In late November 2025 I was fired,” Bukov said in the statement. He said the episode left him with one lesson above all: “the long-term success of any project stands on two pillars of equal weight — technical excellence and leadership grounded in values that hold under pressure.”
Bukov said his role at 1inch was technical and covered protocol architecture, security, and economic design. Over the past year, he said, feedback from users and teammates convinced him he could no longer stay out of the company’s management and operational side. Before he was let go, he spent months pushing for changes in how leadership and communication were handled.
In follow-up responses to The Defiant, Bukov called the outcome a “mature founder split, not a reaction to one specific decision,” and said the disagreement was “about strategic direction, communication and leadership approach.” He declined to link the split to any single choice made by 1inch and said he was not commenting on the company’s current strategy.
Second Tier is being framed as an independent infrastructure company
Bukov is presenting Second Tier as an independent infrastructure company rather than a rival to 1inch. Asked whether the project is another DEX or DEX aggregator, he said: “No, it’s not a DEX or a DEX aggregator, and it isn’t being built ‘against’ 1inch.”
He said the company is building “secure, efficient systems that close the distance between economic intent and its execution,” language that also appears in a manifesto published under his name.
Details remain limited. Bukov said Second Tier has not disclosed any funding — “Nothing to disclose at this stage” — has not named its team, and is not sharing product details until it has a working system to show. He added that hiring would respect prior employers and that team members would be introduced separately.
Bukov links the new company to the work he did at 1inch
Bukov cast the new venture as a continuation of the categories he helped build at 1inch. He listed the first DEX aggregator router, the Fusion Dutch-auction swap mechanism, trustless cross-chain execution, and Aqua, a shared-liquidity model.
As recently as mid-November, shortly before he says he was fired, he was still promoting Aqua’s developer release.
The split comes as 1inch leans harder into traditional finance
The public break arrives as 1inch has spent the past year moving closer to traditional finance. In October, the company integrated its swap engine into the Coinbase app, which the report described as its largest U.S. client. That same month, 1inch used a rebrand to signal a stronger pitch to institutions. Co-founder and Chief Executive Sergej Kunz said at the time that the company’s vision now “extends to all financial markets.”
Bukov has laid out a different goal. “I believe DeFi is the way to an open financial system, one with no friction and no middlemen,” he said. “I’d rather build that than wait around for it.” He said he is starting Second Tier with people who share those values “from day one.”
Volume and token performance show a weaker stretch for 1inch
1inch was among the earliest DEX aggregators when it emerged from a 2019 hackathon. According to DefiLlama, it routed about $2.7 billion in trades over the past 30 days. The Defiant said that figure was down from roughly $14 billion a month in mid-2025, when 1inch ranked as the second-largest aggregator behind Solana’s Jupiter.
CoinGecko data showed the 1INCH token, with a market value of about $104 million, was little changed ahead of the announcement. It slipped around 1% over 24 hours, roughly in line with a similar dip in Bitcoin.
The report also noted that Bukov’s departure lands during a weak stretch for the protocol. Aggregator volumes have fallen well below 2025 levels, and the 1INCH token trades more than 99% below its 2021 peak.
Key parts of Bukov’s account remain unverified in public filings
1inch has not publicly addressed Bukov’s exit, and the description that he was “fired” is his own. The company has not said whether it agrees with that framing or with the timing he gave.
The report added that Bukov’s claims about his 50% stake and his lack of oversight at 1inch cannot be independently verified from public filings.
Second Tier, meanwhile, remains close to a blank slate. It has no live product, no disclosed backers, and no named team. Bukov said he will keep details private until there is “a working system to show, not just a vision.”