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Alisa Davidson
Published: July 16, 2026 at 11:21 am Updated: July 16, 2026 at 12:14 pm
Edited and fact-checked:
July 16, 2026 at 11:21 am
In Brief
1inch co-founder Anton Bukov launches Second Tier, a DeFi infrastructure project, following his dismissal from 1inch.
Anton Bukov, co-founder of decentralized exchange aggregator 1inch and the protocol architect behind its Router, Fusion, and Cross-chain Swap systems, has announced his departure from the company and the launch of a new project, Second Tier. The venture, he states, is focused on “building secure, efficient systems that close the distance between economic intent and its execution.”
According to the project’s website, Second Tier is built on the premise that the friction embedded in today’s financial system — intermediaries, settlement delays, permission layers, opaque terms — is not an inherent property of how value moves, but the product of deliberate design decisions. Rather than optimizing within existing constraints, the project operates one level above them, redesigning the constraint itself. The stated goal is infrastructure that functions the way electricity does: silently, universally, and without gatekeepers — a system in which what a user can do with their capital and what the protocol permits are finally identical.
In practice, this means Second Tier is not building a single product but a series of open, protocol-level architectures intended to create entirely new categories in the programmable economy. The technical approach prioritizes solving problems at their root rather than patching symptoms: building systems where economic intent translates directly into execution, with no intermediary layer absorbing value or introducing delay.
The project is guided by four principles treated as identity commitments rather than policy: user sovereignty over capital and data, root-cause architecture, full transparency of fees and interfaces, and long-term integrity toward users and the product. Everything built is intended to be open — designed to be extended by others beyond the original specification.
From 1inch to Second Tier: A Departure and a Conviction
In an accompanying statement published on X, Bukov reflected on his tenure at 1inch, which he co-founded in May 2019. During that period, he led the protocol’s architecture, security, and economic design, overseeing what he describes as a sequence of category-defining primitives: the first DEX aggregator, the first Dutch-auction price discovery mechanism for swaps, and trustless cross-chain execution via atomic swaps.
“I’m proud of that work, and even prouder of the people behind it,” he wrote, acknowledging the team as among the most capable in the industry.
His departure, however, was not voluntary. Bukov disclosed that after spending months pushing for changes to the company’s leadership and communication structures — prompted by feedback from users and teammates — he was dismissed in late November 2025.
He retains his status as co-founder and holds a 50% shareholding, but has no involvement in 1inch’s operations, product architecture, or security oversight. The experience crystallized a conviction he now treats as foundational: that the long-term success of any project rests equally on technical excellence and on leadership grounded in values that hold under pressure — neither one sufficient without the other.
It is that conviction, he says, that is driving Second Tier. “I believe DeFi is the way to an open financial system, one with no friction and no middlemen,” Bukov stated. “I’d rather build that than wait around for it.”
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About The Author
Alisa, a dedicated journalist at the MPost, specializes in crypto, AI, investments, and the expansive realm of Web3. With a keen eye for emerging trends and technologies, she delivers comprehensive coverage to inform and engage readers in the ever-evolving landscape of digital finance.
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Alisa, a dedicated journalist at the MPost, specializes in crypto, AI, investments, and the expansive realm of Web3. With a keen eye for emerging trends and technologies, she delivers comprehensive coverage to inform and engage readers in the ever-evolving landscape of digital finance.
More articles
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