1inch Aqua Revenue Stream Incubator
Assessment reports: approved candidates
Prepared by: Anode, Programme Steward
Status: Internal draft for 1inch Legal review.
Date: September 2026
Covers: Aqua0, Bleu, Steer Finance and 1delta, the four teams approved to date
Programme: 1IP-93. USD 436,000 allocated, up to USD 50,000 per team.
1. Purpose and method
This log records the reasoning behind each approval decision under the Aqua Revenue Stream Incubator (1IP-93). It exists so that the basis for allocating DAO capital is documented, reviewable and, in time, publishable.
How decisions are made. Applications arrive through the programme’s Notion form. Anode carries out intake and due diligence, verifies scope against the In-Scope and Out-of-Scope categories of the Original Proposal, and prepares a written committee briefing. The team pitches to the three-member Grant Reviewer panel (Anode, DAOPlomats, Arana Digital). Funding requires a simple majority, at least 2 of 3, with the 1inch Core Team also involved in approving the strategy itself. Anode does not hold a casting vote and sits on the panel on the same terms as the other two reviewers.
What we assess. Seven dimensions: scope fit, innovation, technical feasibility, market opportunity, team experience, revenue potential, and technical proficiency with Aqua and swapVM. Approval requires a credible answer on all seven, not a high score on any one.
The common thread across the four approvals. Every team approved so far combines a credible, well-specified idea with a team that has already executed something materially similar. We have not funded a strong idea attached to an unproven team, and we have not funded an experienced team attached to a thin idea. On demonstrated operating track record, 1delta and Steer are the most established of the four.
2. Aqua0 (Cross Margin Labs Inc)
Strategy: Cross-chain liquidity coordination and marketplace layer built on Aqua
Grant: USD 50,000
DAO revenue share: 10% of Aqua-derived Revenue from the first dollar (confirmed in executed agreement)
Status: Approved. Agreement finalized.
What they are building
A single LP capital base that backs multiple pools across multiple chains at the same time, using Aqua’s virtual-balance accounting, with cross-chain rebalancing via LayerZero and settlement on demand. Launch chains are Base and Unichain, with Arbitrum, Celo, Monad, Avalanche, Robinhood Chain and Ethereum to follow. Implementation is via venue-adapter and hook contracts against 1inch’s canonical deployments, with strategies composed as SwapVM bytecode programs from the existing instruction set. No new on-chain instruction set, opcode or router is created.
Basis for approval
Scope. Squarely in scope as an AMM/DeFi service using Aqua as an accounting and settlement layer. It exercises exactly the capability Aqua was designed to provide, which made it a natural first grant for the programme.
Innovation. Capital amplification across chains from one deposit is a direct expression of Aqua’s shared-liquidity design rather than a re-parameterisation of an existing curve. It does not overlap anything on the 1inch Core Team’s roadmap.
Team experience. Alumni of Nethermind, Etherscan, NEAR Protocol and Solv Protocol, and previously accepted into the Uniswap Incubator. This was the decisive factor: a cross-chain coordination layer is an integration-heavy build and the team had shipped comparable infrastructure before.
Process note worth recording. Aqua0’s first submission was not fundable. They received revision feedback, resubmitted a materially stronger application and were approved. We regard the willingness to engage with critical feedback as evidence in itself, and the same pattern later recurred with other applicants.
Conditions and watch items
- Milestone structure was varied by approval: Milestones 1 and 2 are combined into a single 15% tranche of USDC 7,500, reflecting that idea verification was substantially complete before application. Milestones 3 and 4 are unchanged at 35% and 50%.
- Revenue is scoped to activity executing on the Aqua or SwapVM stacks. Aqua0’s Uniswap v4 hook venues, cross-chain filler and bridging legs and stablecoin FX engine sit outside the share, with pro-rata allocation where a transaction spans both and anti-circumvention provisions preserved.
- Administrative keys and contract-control mechanisms remain solely with the Grantee, recorded as not applicable in Schedule A. The Steward’s view is that KYB clearance, the binding revenue share, handover and step-in mechanics and the clawback provide the DAO with adequate protection without key-level control.
- Not for publication in current form: the team has disclosed a market-maker rebate programme that may suppress DAO revenue during an initial bootstrap window. Terms addressing it are in the agreement. Legal should advise on whether and how this is disclosed publicly.
3. Bleu, Aqua Portfolio Manager
Strategy: Portfolio-exposure management across multiple Aqua strategies sharing one capital base
Grant: USD 50,000 requested
DAO revenue share: 50% of Bleu’s protocol-fee cut, from the first dollar, no minimum threshold (per application)
Status: Approved
What they are building
Aqua lets an LP run many strategies off one capital base, but nobody manages what that capital base adds up to across strategies. The LP’s net token exposure becomes the emergent sum of everything it has shipped. Aqua Portfolio Manager is the layer that holds that combined position on target: the LP declares target exposure by asset group rather than by individual token, and the strategy prices swaps with a constant-mean weighted curve anchored to oracle feeds, so trades moving the portfolio toward target get the better side of the curve and trades moving it away get the worse side. The portfolio is held near target as a by-product of ordinary trading rather than scheduled manual rebalances. It is self-funding by design: flow that corrects skew is discounted, flow that worsens it is surcharged.
Basis for approval
Scope and innovation. Single-pair inventory drift is a solved problem. Managing net exposure across many strategies sharing one Aqua capital base is not, and the need is created by Aqua’s own design. The weighted curve is a well-understood settlement engine; the new work is the portfolio-control layer on top of it.
Strategic value beyond the fee. This is the clearest case in the portfolio of a strategy whose value is enablement rather than revenue. Unmanaged net exposure caps how far any LP can safely scale across strategies. Removing that cap grows the base that every other strategy’s protocol fee is charged against.
Team experience. Bleu is a product engineering studio with substantial AMM and DEX infrastructure work: contributors to Balancer and CoW Protocol, with a Balancer contributor advising the design directly. Directly relevant, since the pricing engine is a constant-mean weighted curve.
Process note. Bleu originally applied with a dynamic-fee instrument (Incremental Volume Fee) and pivoted to Portfolio Manager during review after discussion with the Steward about where the genuine gap sat. The pivot was initiated by the team, and the second proposal was materially stronger.
Conditions and watch items
- Revenue share scope, worth stating precisely. The 50% applies to Bleu’s own cut of the Aqua protocol fee, not to all revenue the strategy touches. On the team’s own model that is roughly USD 1,200 per month gross at 2 bps on USD 6M of corrective volume, of which about USD 600 goes to the DAO. It is a high percentage of a deliberately modest base, and should not be read as a 50% share of strategy revenue.
- Figure above is taken from the application. It should be checked against the reviewer approval record before publication in case it was negotiated at pitch.
- The team has requested an audit budget separate from and additional to the development grant. This is a programme-level question, not unique to Bleu, and is not covered by 1IP-93 as drafted.
- They commit to maintaining the LP application for at least twelve months after mainnet, funded from their share of the protocol fee, and to publishing a post-launch report three months after Aqua opens to real flow.
4. Steer Finance
Strategy: Managed liquidity and automated liquidity management applied to Aqua
Grant: To be completed
DAO revenue share: To be completed
Status: Approved
What they are building
Steer operates an automated liquidity management (ALM) vault layer. Capital is supplied by chains, issuers, allocators and LPs; Steer places it in live markets, automates range management and rebalancing, and holds defined market-quality KPIs under management: depth near the active price, slippage at agreed trade sizes, range coverage for expected unwind flow, and uptime of usable range capital. The deliberate operating boundary is that Steer manages capital it does not supply, and does not guarantee execution or act as a liquidation backstop.
Their three core programmes are chain launches and spot-market growth, asset issuance and market cultivation, and lending liquidity, where the problem is that an oracle makes an asset priceable but does not make it safe to liquidate, so a lending listing needs demonstrable and continuing liquidation depth.
Basis for approval
Team experience, and this is the core of the case. Steer is the most operationally proven applicant the programme has assessed, with a production record that is externally verifiable rather than self-reported:
- Katana. Day-one liquidity manager at chain launch alongside Sushi, Morpho, Yearn and Merkl. Approximately 34 markets managed and a peak Smart Pool TVL of around USD 25M. Katana has publicly linked dependable DEX depth to lower-slippage Morpho liquidations and named Steer among preferred ALM providers.
- Yearn. The vbUSDC allocator routes a portion of single-asset deposits into named Steer LP strategies, with roughly USD 4.38M in named allocations across four Katana allocators at a point-in-time snapshot. Third-party allocator capital being directed into their strategies is a meaningful external validation.
- Reserve. 42 or more individual markets managed across Ethereum, Base and BSC with USD 8M or more in total market liquidity, including Ondo tokenized securities.
- Sushi. Steer Smart Pools run inside Sushi’s native UI.
- Further production deployments with Kinetic on Flare, Bedrock uniETH, OORT on BNB Chain, and PEAQ and Lucid.
Innovation and fit with Aqua. The strategic argument is distribution and capital quality rather than a novel curve. Aqua’s constraint is not expressiveness but usable depth and the operational burden that keeps most users from providing liquidity. Steer’s stated design principle, that the venue owns the user experience while Steer makes LPing a single decision, maps directly onto what Aqua needs to convert shared liquidity into executable depth. Their lending liquidity programme is also the natural counterpart to the credit-backed strategies now entering the portfolio.
Revenue potential. The strongest of the four on near-term revenue, because they arrive with existing capital relationships and allocator channels rather than needing to bootstrap liquidity cold.
Conditions and watch items
- This section needs completing before circulation. The assessment above is written from Steer’s programme materials. The grant amount, agreed revenue share percentage, milestone structure, target chains and assets, and the legal counterparty for the agreement are not yet reflected here and should be taken from their application and approval record.
- The metrics cited above are Steer’s own figures from their materials. Several are externally checkable (Katana launch, Yearn allocator, Sushi Smart Pools, Reserve DTFs) and we should link the public sources before publication rather than presenting them as programme findings.
- Scope point to record explicitly: Steer manages third-party capital and does not supply it. The revenue share basis must be defined against fees Steer itself earns, not against capital or TVL it manages on behalf of others.
5. 1delta (1delta Labs Ltd)
Strategy: CreditMaker, lending positions as market-making inventory
Grant: USD 50,000
DAO revenue share: 25% of gross fee revenue from the first dollar, stepping to 15% above USD 2,000,000 of annual fee revenue (per application)
Status: Approved. KYB complete. Agreement in preparation.
What they are building
An LP’s existing lending position becomes AMM inventory without the assets leaving their account. The LP supplies to Aave, Morpho, Compound or Euler as normal; the position stays visible and withdrawable in the lender’s own interface while quoting on 1inch. The LP keeps the supply yield and the spread is additive.
The technical novelty is the pricing domain. Ordinary curves price off pool reserves, which breaks under leverage, because as collateral falls the curve buys more of it with more debt and walks into liquidation. CreditMaker prices off what the position can trade before it becomes unsafe, using a safe loan-to-value ceiling set below liquidation, with borrowable and withdrawable capacity and a freeboard state variable derived from it. Five rules bind any curve: quote zero at the bound; deepest when safest; deleveraging prices better than extending; curvature makes pushing toward liquidation unprofitable; and the spread must cover freeboard consumed, borrow rate and oracle staleness.
Basis for approval
Team experience. Alongside Steer, the most operationally established applicant. 1delta has run non-custodial lending aggregation since 2023 across 40 or more chains and 300 or more lending markets, with 150 or more protocol deployments and USD 200M or more processed. Ecosystem grants from Aave, Compound, Polygon and Mantle, and a Compound integration audited by Certora. Their institutional product, Clearstone, builds permissioned market architecture on Morpho, Euler and Kamino.
Critically, they have already built this exact composition for 1inch: 1delta Unite won first place in 1inch’s Expand Limit Order Protocol track at ETHGlobal Unite DeFi, a Limit Order Protocol extension opening margin positions against Aave v3 and Morpho Blue, gasless for the user, with fillers holding no inventory. CreditMaker moves that same idea from order flow to a continuous quoting surface. A team without existing lending infrastructure would spend most of a USD 50,000 grant building adapters and getting delegation right; 1delta starts at the curve.
Technical proficiency with Aqua. The strongest demonstrated understanding of Aqua internals in any application received. Their design works from the actual contract behaviour: that pull() is a plain transferFrom with no maker-side hook, so inventory must be sourced before the pull rather than through a callback; that ship() performs no solvency check, which is what allows a virtual balance to represent credit capacity rather than tokens held; and that nonReentrantStrategy locks per maker and strategy rather than globally, which defines the reentrancy surface a shared position manager must handle.
Non-custodial integrity. The design preserves Aqua’s core guarantee. Inventory stays in the LP’s own lender account, Aqua core takes no credit risk, solvency is verified at execution, and quotes return zero rather than quoting a reverting trade, so the failure mode is a revert and never a bad fill. Containment is enforced through three user-held gates, each unilaterally revocable.
Scope. Confirmed in scope and genuinely novel. Not constant-product, concentrated-liquidity or stableswap; the pricing domain is credit capacity rather than token reserves, with no reserve-product or invariant-sum form. Not a plain fee mechanism, since solvency is intrinsic to the state space rather than a fee layered over an existing curve. Implemented as an AquaApp rather than a modification to an existing instruction.
Conditions and watch items
- Revenue share scope. The 25% and 15% figures apply to the operator’s gross fee take, being the spread CreditMaker charges on swaps, and expressly not to LP returns. Lending yield, net carry and other LP economics sit outside Revenue, and the DAO’s share is paid before the Grantee’s costs.
- Figures above are taken from the application. A stepped share is unusual for this programme, so the reviewer approval record should be checked before publication to confirm the step was approved rather than a flat rate.
- swapVM familiarity is at specification level. They have not shipped an instruction, and expect to engage with swapVM at the routing-integration stage in Milestone 4. Core-team guidance at that point was requested and should be arranged.
- Portfolio adjacency to record. 1delta CreditMaker sits in the same credit-for-makers lane as other applications now in the pipeline. The mechanisms differ, since CreditMaker turns a maker’s own lending position into inventory rather than financing other makers, but the committee should evaluate future applications in this lane with the overlap explicit rather than double-funding one thesis.
6. Portfolio view
| Team | Category | Grant | DAO share | What it adds |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aqua0 | Cross-chain liquidity | USD 50,000 | 10% | Capital amplification across chains from one deposit |
| Bleu | Portfolio / meta-strategy | USD 50,000 | 50% | Lets one LP safely run many strategies at once |
| Steer | Managed liquidity (ALM) | To confirm | To confirm | Converts shared liquidity into usable, maintained depth |
| 1delta | Credit-backed market making | USD 50,000 | 25% to 15% | Makes idle lending collateral quote without leaving the lender |
The four are complementary rather than overlapping. Aqua0 widens the capital base across chains, Bleu removes the ceiling on how many strategies one LP can run, Steer improves the quality and maintenance of the resulting depth, and 1delta brings in a class of inventory that no pre-funded AMM can quote. None of the four duplicates work on the 1inch Core Team’s roadmap, which was verified against the core team’s working list of curves and fee mechanisms.