Looking back on 5 years of innovation: 1inch in 2020

This series of posts follows each year of 1inch’s journey, chronicling its rise to becoming a leading player in the Web3 space. In this second post, we reflect on 2020 –  a year of significant growth and groundbreaking achievements for the project.

Just one year after its launch as a DEX aggregator, 1inch entered 2020 with impressive milestones and even more ambitious plans on the horizon. That year turned out to be a breakout period for both the DeFi industry and 1inch. 

One of the most significant upgrades to the 1inch dApp was the introduction of a limit order functionality. That feature was previously available only on centralized exchanges, which posed a barrier for many users. As DEXes evolved and offered more advanced trading tools, many of them enriched their options with this feature. However, 1inch stood out as one of the first and largest DeFi projects to provide a limit order functionality.

In 2020, the 1inch dApp received numerous other handy features, such as the reflection of gas costs, multi-split, custom token support and Ledger support. But perhaps the most pivotal development was the unveiling of 1inch's version 2, which included Pathfinder, a new discovery and routing algorithm designed to find the best possible paths for token swaps in the shortest possible time.

Pathfinder not only split a swap across multiple supported liquidity protocols but also utilized multiple ‘market depths’ within the same protocol. This sophisticated approach ensured users got the best rates while considering gas consumption. Thanks to these improvements, 1inch could offer rates for some token pairs that were nearly 98% better than those of leading DEXes.

One of the year's final yet most crucial events occurred on December 25, with the launch of the 1INCH token. 2020 was also a year of several significant strategic partnerships for 1inch. The project integrated with major players like Safe, MetaMask, MyEtherWallet and Chainlink, driving DeFi adoption forward to reach a broader audience.

Also in 2020, 1inch successfully closed Seed and Series A investment rounds, raising $2.8 mln in the former and $12 mln in the latter.

No wonder that that breakthrough year saw impressive milestones. In July, 1inch joined the Tres Commas Club by total volume. The year closed with a mind-blowing $8B in volume, over 500K swaps and 50K+ users. 

Stay tuned for another chapter of the 1inch story!