1inch

About the Brand

1inch is a leading DEX aggregator that routes users to the best on-chain swap pricing across dozens of liquidity sources. The protocol's core value proposition is that no single DEX can match an aggregator's effective price across ETH-mainnet, L2 ecosystems, and EVM-compatible chains.

Target Audience: Crypto-active users with multi-chain DeFi behaviour—particularly users who currently swap on a single DEX and have not yet adopted aggregator routing.

Growth Stage: Enterprise / Established Protocol.

The Challenge 

Drive qualified protocol activations—wallets that arrived, connected, and executed a first swap within 14 days. Click metrics, email signups, and Twitter follows were not the unit the team was measuring. However, there were some obstacles to achieving these: 

Key Obstacles

• Vanity-metric trap. Most paid channels available to a DeFi protocol deliver clicks and email captures; neither correlates with on-chain activation.
• Audience invisibility. Mainstream platforms have no native targeting layer for "users who currently swap on Uniswap but haven't tried 1inch."
• Crypto-platform restrictions. Token-related messaging is policy-restricted on Google, Meta, and TikTok.
• Attribution drift. Without a wallet-level signal, the team could not connect a click to an on-chain swap action.

The Blockchain-Ads

Before switching to Blockchain-Ads, 1inch used sponsored editorial, conference activations, and influencer partnerships, which could deliver wallet downloads but not first-swap activations. To get first-swap activations, they decided to use Blockchain-Ads, leveraging the following capabilities.

• Wallet-level audience targeting and attribution: segments built on confirmed swap behaviour on competing DEXes.
• Web3 publisher network: placements adjacent to DeFi dashboards and analytics platforms.
• Compliance-aware creative review: protocol-level creative that passed scrutiny on Web3 inventory mainstream platforms could not be served.
• Cross-protocol behavioural signal: the ability to bid for users active on Uniswap or Sushi but not yet on 1inch.

Unique Capabilities Leveraged

• DEX-active wallet segments: wallets executing swaps on Uniswap, Sushi, Curve, Balancer, and Camelot.
• Multi-chain DEX-trader segments: users active across L1 and L2 ecosystems.
• Aggregator-curious wallet segments: wallets demonstrating slippage-conscious behaviour.
• Wallet retargeting: for connected-but-not-swapped cohorts.

Before Blockchain-Ads → After Blockchain-Ads

• CPA (per First-Swap Wallet): ~$54 → $25
• CTR: 0.10% → 0.71%
• Click → First Swap: 0.94% → 2.41%
• 30-day Repeat-Swap Rate: 32% → 57%

Activated cohorts acquired through Blockchain-Ads showed 57% 30-day repeat-swap rates and meaningfully higher cross-chain swap behavior. The campaign produced a defensible spend-to-on-chain-action chain — the first time the team could attribute paid spend directly to swap volume in a way internal stakeholders accepted.

Phase 1 — Learning (Month 1)

Objective: Identify the DEX-active wallet behaviors most predictive of aggregator adoption.

Actions:

• Four wallet behavioral segments tested: Uniswap-only swappers (>3 swaps in 90 days), Multi-DEX swappers (active on 2+ aggregators or DEXes), L2-active swappers (Arbitrum, Optimism, Base), Stablecoin-pair swappers (high-velocity stablecoin movement)
• Six creative variants — split between savings-led and product-led
• Geo split: NA (35%), Western Europe (30%), India (20%), SEA (15%)

Insights:

• Uniswap-only swappers converted to first-swap-on-1inch at 3.4x the rate of multi-DEX control.
• Savings-led creative outperformed product-led on click-to-swap rate by 41%.
• L2-active swappers converted at higher CPA but with 2.7x the 30-day swap-volume per user.

Phase 2 — Consideration (Month 2–3)

Objective: Concentrate budget on Uniswap-only and L2-active segments and tighten the activation funnel.

Actions:

• 65% of budget reallocated to Uniswap-only swappers and L2-active segments.
• Creative cycle moved to weekly. Savings-led creative locked as primary funnel-entry.
• Funnel rebuilt: a wallet-aware swap-preview surfaced for connected wallets with detected DEX history, showing the actual savings on a sample swap before requiring the swap commitment. Reduced first-swap drop-off by ~29%.

Performance Improvements:

• CTR climbed 0.34% → 0.78%.
• CPC compressed $1.40 → $0.95.
• Click-to-first-swap rate improved 0.94% → 2.61%.

Phase 3 — Activation + Retargeting (Month 4–7)

Objective: Scale activation volume while keeping CPA under $35 ceiling.

Actions:

• Daily spend lifted 3.0x against winning cohorts.
• Wallet-based retargeting for connected wallets that didn't swap within 7 days.
• Behavioral retargeting for users who connected and routed but didn't execute the swap.
• Volatility-window bid surging activated during high-DEX-volume crypto-market windows.
• Geo expansion into Vietnam, Brazil, Turkey — all three cleared the CPA threshold.

Outcome:

• Steady-state CPA settled at $25 under the $35 ceiling.
• Retargeted cohorts swapped at 2.5x the rate of cold prospecting.
• 30-day repeat-swap rate hit 57% of activated cohort.