1inch’s Sergej Kunz: CEXes will be DeFi front ends

According to 1inch co-founder Sergej Kunz, over the next decade, centralized crypto exchanges are likely to be reduced to frontends for decentralized finance.

At TOKEN2049 in Singapore earlier this month, 1inch co-founder Sergej Kunz shared his vision for the future of decentralized finance (DeFi), predicting its growing prominence at the expense of centralized exchanges, as well as a convergence between traditional finance and DeFi.

Centralized crypto exchanges could disappear within five to ten years, as decentralized finance (DeFi) aggregators take over, Sergej said in an interview with Cointelegraph, also stressing 1inch’s role as a global liquidity hub - in contrast to isolated centralized exchanges.

He pointed out that centralized exchanges have been stepping up their investments in on-chain systems as they realized that the technology they rely on “will not stay forever because you have decentralized exchanges and digitalized finance.”

“They don’t want to miss the train and stay behind, so they adopt our technology because it’s something that, from our point of view, will empower the whole financial industry,” he told Cointelegraph.

Meanwhile, according to Sergej, the distinction between traditional finance and DeFi is gradually going to disappear. “Soon, DeFi will be indistinguishable from traditional finance. But that doesn't mean centralization,” he told finews.com. “It means traditional systems and users are coming on-chain.”

Sergej’s comments come as 1inch steps up its role as a DeFi infrastructure provider, focusing on delivering access to other businesses. Among the projects already using 1inch’s technology to power their non-custodial swaps are major centralized exchanges and wallets, including Binance, Coinbase, Ledger, MetaMask and Trust Wallet.