DeFi market has room for growth in Korea: 1inch co-founder — KBW 2022

1inch plans to expand into a largely untapped Asian market, but a lack of DeFi knowledge is preventing mass adoption

Decentralized-finance (DeFi) aggregator 1inch Network has revealed plans to expand its reach in Asia.

Speaking to Cointelegraph during Korean Blockchain Week (KBW) 2022 on Aug. 8, co-founder Sergej Kunz said that despite the DeFi market being relatively small in Korea and Asia, there are a number of Asia-based Web3 companies that 1inch is looking to partner with.

However, Kunz also added that the biggest barrier to entry appears to be a lack of understanding about DeFi and how to use crypto wallets:

“As soon as people understand that they can [yield] farm, they can swap, they can exchange and get easy access to cryptocurrencies on Ethereum with a few simple EVM-compatible networks, the market will grow a lot.”

However, Kunz also added that the popularity of blockchain-based gaming in Asia could bring more individuals into the DeFi market.

“Here, there are a lot of people who like gaming and a lot of things like that, so I think the DeFi market can grow a lot in South Korea.”

1inch’s plan to expand into the Asian market comes as they told Cointelegraph at KBW that they’re currently working on a partnership with metaverse-focused blockchain Klaytn.

The 1inch Network’s main use case is a decentralized exchange (DEX) aggregator which scans DEXs to find pools with the largest liquidity, lowest slippage, and cheapest cryptocurrency exchange rates. 1inch also provides users with a mobile wallet that can be used for DeFi purposes.

Transactions on the network are powered by the 1INCH token, which is priced at $0.83 at the time of writing.