1inch vs SushiSwap: Which DEX Token Gained 35% in 30 Days?

SushiSwap ran 35.24% over the thirty sessions to the Friday 11 September 2026 close and 1inch managed 8.30%. Put 1inch vs SushiSwap side by side over that window and the token carrying the golden cross is the one that lost. SUSHI has no cross at all and it still won by more than four times.

The obvious story dies on its own data. The 1inch 50-day average crossed above its 200-day on 10 September 2026 and closed 0.1629% above it at the Friday 11 September 2026 close, computed on Phemex spot closes. SushiSwap's 50-day ran 4.9774% below its 200-day on that same session, and its last cross went the other way on 18 October 2025.

1inch vs SushiSwap at a Glance

What 1inch Sells and What SushiSwap Sells

1inch is a DEX aggregator. Its Pathfinder engine splits one order across whatever protocols quote the best combined price, and the project's own documentation lists 16 blockchains it routes over. The contracts never take custody of a pool. Our explainer on how 1inch routes an order covers the routing side of the business. There's no depth on the books to earn from, and the design intends it that way.

SushiSwap runs the other model. It owns the pools, and every swap through them pays a fee that Sushi's own documentation puts at a typical 0.30%, of which 0.05% funds buybacks for stakers. That is what an automated market maker is in one line, and it makes the balance sheet the business.

The split shows up in the money. On Friday 11 September 2026 the 1inch aggregator routed $98,754,716 of volume while SushiSwap's own pools traded $12,462,178, roughly one eighth of it. 1inch moved 7.9 times the dollars and collected $1,627 in fees against Sushi's $28,340. Across August 2026, a complete calendar month on both series, the pools collected $1,346,757 against the router's $51,273. Both fee series come from a public chain-data aggregator, and the 1inch series begins on 20 July 2026, so no year-long comparison exists yet.

An aggregator does not need TVL to function, and an AMM's revenue is its TVL.

Why the 1inch Golden Cross Is the Wrong Reason to Buy

The cross is real and it printed on 10 September 2026. The 1inch 50-day average came up through its 200-day and closed 0.1629% above it one session later, on Phemex spot closes. What a cross can't carry is the size of the move behind it.

The 1inch price closed at $0.090000 on Friday 11 September 2026 and the SushiSwap price closed at $0.217600 on the same feed. Over the thirty sessions to that close 1INCH gained 8.30% and SUSHI gained 35.24%, which is 4.25 times as much. Over seven sessions 1INCH lost 0.66% and SUSHI gained 14.17%. The token holding the buy signal lost both races.

1inch has printed this exact signal before. Its previous golden cross landed on 30 July 2025 at a close of $0.2645, and the two averages crossed back the other way 89 days later on 27 October 2025 at $0.1798. If you'd bought that signal and sold the reverse one, you'd have taken a 32.02% loss. The arithmetic behind how the moving averages workexplains the gap between the signal and the outcome, because a crossing of two lagging lines describes what already happened.

SushiSwap's last cross went the other way on 18 October 2025 at $0.5168, and the token ran 35.24% over the thirty sessions to the 11 September close without ever repairing it.

Both tokens are far under their own 365-session window highs on a closing basis, and both of those highs are dated 13 September 2025. 1INCH closed 67.15% under $0.274000 and SUSHI closed 74.46% under $0.852100. Both highs leave the 365-session window across 12 and 13 September 2026, so the two figures above belong to the window ending Friday 11 September 2026 and to nothing after it.

Which DEX Token Earns More Per Dollar of Market Cap

Rebuild both caps from circulating supply and the dated close, which is the only way to keep a moving figure out of the arithmetic. 1inch has 1,405,573,965.73 tokens circulating, so its cap on the 11 September close comes to $126,501,657. SushiSwap has 286,745,777.59 circulating for $62,395,881. The aggregator carries roughly twice the valuation of the AMM.

How to calculate market cap is supply times price and nothing else, so the real question is what each cap buys. Sushi's pools held $99,359,933 of capital on 11 September 2026 against the router contracts' $3,125,035, a ratio of 31.8 to one. SUSHI therefore trades at 0.63 times the dollars parked inside its own contracts and 1INCH trades at 40.5 times.

That 40.5 is no red flag on its own, because the router was never built to hold capital. It earns from order flow, and anyone who has read market makers against market takers can see why a routing business carries no inventory by design. The flow simply does not convert into fees at anything like the rate the valuation implies. On the August 2026 fee lines the pools out-collected the router 26.3 to one while carrying half its market cap.

Revenue is the thing the market prices here, and on 11 September 2026 the AMM out-earned the aggregator 17 to one. If you're holding either token for a claim on swap fees, that ratio is the whole position.

The 1inch Token Supply Against the Sushi Token Supply

The 1INCH token contract on Ethereum reports a total supply of 1,499,999,999.997, and 1,405,573,965.73 of that circulates. The contract has finished minting at 93.7% distributed, so 94,426,034 tokens remain before the float reaches its ceiling. That float can grow 6.7% and then it stops for good.

Sushi has no such ceiling. Its token contract reports 291,514,753.90 in total against 286,745,777.59 circulating, a float of 98.4%, and Sushi's own tokenomics page states that SUSHI "does not have a hard-capped maximum supply" because "block rewards continue indefinitely".

That is the specific risk sitting on the winning side of this comparison. A SUSHI position pays for revenue that runs against an issuance schedule with no stated end, and the 0.05 points the protocol skims from a 0.30% swap fee is the whole of the offset. In August 2026 that skim came to $499,913.

1inch vs SushiSwap and Which One to Own for DeFi Fee Exposure

Buy SUSHI. The use case is a token position sized on the swap revenue a protocol collects, and on that test the AMM wins on every dated number here. You're paying for fee flow, so you should buy the protocol that has some. Its pools held $99,359,933 on 11 September 2026, it collected $28,340 of fees that session, and the market values the whole protocol at $62,395,881. 1inch collected $1,627 on the same session against a $126,501,657 valuation. The aggregator is the better product and the weaker token, and a golden cross changes neither half of that.

Route through 1inch. Execution is a different question, and the router wins it without argument because it quotes across 16 chains and charges you nothing for the routing itself. Only the second question favours the aggregator.

Both tokens rose into the August 2026 CPI print that landed at 12:30 UTC on 11 September, 1INCH by 2.27% and SUSHI by 2.45%. The Federal Reserve meets on 15 and 16 September 2026 with a Summary of Economic Projections attached, and that meeting is the next dated event either token has to trade through.

The level that breaks the SUSHI case is issuance. Fees have to keep pace with block rewards the documentation says never stop, and August 2026's $499,913 of buybacks against a $62.4 million valuation is a thin margin for that job. Watch the monthly fee line, and if you see it drop under the run rate that funds the buyback the revenue argument goes with it.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Phemex list a 1inch or a SushiSwap perpetual?

Neither. Both trade as spot pairs, 1INCH-USDT and SUSHI-USDT. Phemex carried 116 listed perpetual contracts on 12 September 2026 and these two tokens are absent from that set.

Where did each token bottom inside the 365-session window ending 11 September 2026?

1INCH closed at $0.065800 on 30 June 2026 and SUSHI closed at $0.147000 on 25 June 2026, both on Phemex spot. Each low came after the 13 September 2025 high, so the span between them is a genuine drawdown in both cases.

How many chains does the 1inch aggregator route across?

Sixteen, per the project's own developer documentation. Ethereum and Solana both appear on that list.

Do the two price feeds agree on the 11 September close?

Closely. A second dated feed reads $0.0901912 for 1INCH against Phemex spot's $0.090000, a spread of 0.21%. On SUSHI that same feed reads $0.2170346 against $0.217600, a gap of 0.26%.

Bottom Line

A golden cross reports that two lagging averages have met. It says nothing about the size of what follows, and on this pair it pointed at the slower horse for thirty straight sessions while the token with the broken signal ran four times as far.

What separated them was earnings. One protocol owns $99 million of working capital and bills every trade that touches it. The other owns almost none by design and bills almost nothing, and the market values the earner at half what it values the router.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and is not financial advice. Cryptocurrency trading involves substantial risk. Always do your own research before making investment decisions.