1inch co-founder says he was fired, announces new venture

In the crypto world, we often pretend that decentralized protocols are built by purely democratic collectives. We like the idea that code is the only master. But inside the office walls, or more likely the Telegram groups and Zoom calls, these projects are run by humans. And humans, especially high-performing founders, eventually clash.

Anton Bukov, one of the two primary architects behind the 1inch Network, has officially confirmed his departure. More importantly, he used the word "fired." That is a heavy term in a space where usually founders "transition to an advisory role" or "spend more time with family." Bukov is being blunt about his exit, and it tells us a lot about the growing pains of major DeFi protocols as they try to scale from hackathon projects to global financial infrastructure.

The Collision of Vision and Governance

1inch launched as a scrappy aggregator during a 2019 hackathon. Bukov and his co-founder Sergej Kunz built something that actually solved a problem: finding the best price across fragmented pools of liquidity. It worked because the engineering was tight. But fast forward to 2024 and 2025, and the project is no longer just a smart contract. It is a massive entity with institutional partners, a foundation, and a treasury.

According to Bukov, the friction started when he pushed for significant changes in how the company was managed. He wasn't just talking about the code anymore; he was talking about the structure of the organization itself. When a technical founder starts questioning the C-suite's operational efficiency, one of two things happens: the company evolves, or the founder is shown the door. In this case, it was the latter.

For builders, this is a cautionary tale about the "Founders' Dilemma." There is a specific point in a startup's lifecycle where the skills needed to build the product are different from the skills needed to maintain a global corporation. Bukov is, by all accounts, a builder's builder. If he felt the management was getting in the way of the mission, he likely wasn't going to stay quiet about it.

What This Means for 1inch

When a co-founder leaves, especially one as technically integrated as Bukov, there is always a question of brain drain. 1inch has a deep bench of developers, but Bukov was the soul of the technical vision for years. His departure marks the end of the original duo that defined the aggregator space.

• Operational Continuity: The protocol itself is decentralized enough that it won't stop working. The smart contracts are live. However, the roadmap might shift.
• Market Perception: Investors generally hate internal drama. If 1inch wants to keep its lead against competitors like Uniswap’s interface or CowSwap, it needs to show that this management shakeup actually leads to a better product, not just a quieter boardroom.
• The Talent Split: We often see teams split into factions. It remains to be seen if other key engineers follow Bukov out the door or if the remaining leadership can maintain morale.

The New Venture: Back to the Roots

Bukov isn't retiring. He has already teased a new venture, which is the most founder-like move possible. When you get ousted from the house you built, you go down the street and build a better one. While details remain thin, his focus seems to be shifting back to pure engineering challenges rather than corporate management.

This is actually a net positive for the ecosystem. We get to keep 1inch as it is, and we get a new project from one of the most capable minds in Solidity development. Competition breeds better tools for all of us. If Bukov felt he was being stifled by 1inch's corporate overhead, his next project will likely be leaner, faster, and more aggressive.

"If you're not breaking things or building something that makes people uncomfortable, you're probably just a manager, not a founder."

The Reality of Scaling DeFi

We need to stop being surprised when DAOs and DeFi companies face internal coups. These are high-stakes businesses. 1inch handles billions in volume. At that scale, the pressure to professionalize often kills the culture that made the project successful in the first place.

Builders reading this need to think about their own operating agreements and governance structures early on. If you are the technical lead, ensure you have a seat at the table that isn't just tied to your output as a coder. If your vision for the company's organization doesn't align with your co-founder's, that friction will eventually turn into a fire. Bukov found that out the hard way.

Takeaway for Builders

The exit of a technical founder is rarely about the code; it is almost always about the power to make decisions. As your project grows, your biggest challenges won't be debugging smart contracts—they will be navigating the personalities of the people you hired to help you scale. Bukov’s departure is a reminder that in crypto, the only thing harder than building a unicorn is keeping control of it.

Read the original at Cointelegraph →