Injective Protocol
Injective Protocol is a layer-2 DEX (Decentralized Exchange) founded by Eric Chen and Albert Chon. The platform supports advanced trading features such as margin trading and derivatives. On November 30, 2020, Injective Protocol announced the launch of their public Solstice testnet. In April 2021, Injective raised $10 million in a funding round with participation from billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban, Pantera Capital, BlockTower Capital, Hashed Ventures, CMS Holdings, and QCP Capital. [1][61]
Overview
The Injective Chain is a decentralized sidechain relayer network that serves as a layer-2 derivatives platform, trade execution coordinator (TEC), and decentralized order book. The core consensus is Tendermint-based. The Injective Chain provides a two-way Ethereum peg zone for Ether and ERC-20 tokens to be transferred to the Injective Chain and an EVM-compatible execution environment for DeFi applications.[4]
The peg-zone is based on Peggy and the EVM execution is based on Ethermint. Injective's order book is a fully decentralized 0x-based order book that enables sidechain order relay with the on-chain settlement, a decentralized implementation of the traditionally centralized off-chain order relay used by nearly all centralized limit order book decentralized exchanges. Market creation is entirely open and permissionless. This enables anyone to create a market using only a price feed and deploy it to the larger Injective ecosystem. Given the unique layer-2 structure, Injective is able to avoid both network congestion and the associated high gas fees. This zero gas fee structure can enable anyone to trade freely without worrying about high gas fees or network latencies. [5]
Many DEXs are centralized in most aspects besides custody. A few components that make DEXs centralized are restricting access to certain user demographics and retaining proprietary control over exchange infrastructure. These components allow traders to be subject to the will of an omnipotent authority. Injective Protocol aims to resolve this fundamental problem. The project was incubated by Binance Labs in 2018 and conducted an initial exchange offering on Binance as well in October 2020. [2]
Solstice Testnet
On November 30, 2020, Injective Protocol announced the successful public launch of the Solstice testnet. Solstice was launched with 9 initial perpetual markets with live price feeds stemming from various sources. The initial markets included the following: Injective, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Binance Coin, Polkadot, Elrond, Chainlink, Uniswap, and Yearn Finance. The Solstice testnet was invite-only therefore, users could only gain access via a unique referral link. This allowed users to get early access to Solstice while also earning additional rewards before the start of the trading competition. Other projects that got listed on the Solstice testnet included Alpha Finance and Kava.io. [3]
On December 4, 2020, the Injective team launched their first synthetic assets on its Solstice testnet. Users became able to trade gold perpetual markets with up to 20x leverage. [3]
Solstice V2
The Injective team launched Solstice V2 on December 8, 2020, with upgrades including a new look, improved market details on the home screen, tooltips for new traders, and full responsiveness on all devices. They also announced listings for Keep3r Network and The Graph on the Solstice Testnet. The public launch of Solstice V2 took place on December 21, 2020. [6][7]
Solstice Pro
On December 29, 2020, Injective introduced Solstice Pro, a suite of institutional-grade products designed to enhance its Decentralized Exchange (DEX) offerings. Solstice Pro incorporates features such as expiry futures, an extensive trade history view encompassing trade, position, and deposit histories, and a dedicated portfolio page enabling users to track activity across all markets on Injective, including token balances, orders, positions, and complete trade history. These additions aim to provide advanced functionality and improved trading experiences for users on the Injective platform. [11][12]
Yield Farming Derivative
On December 15, 2020, the Injective team launched the world's first yield farming derivative based on a specific Yearn Finance Vault. The particular derivative created would track the performance of $1,000 USDT on Yearn Finance's USDT3pool. This meant that any trader could access the same yield as a farmer on the USDT3pool without deploying money or having to interface with the protocol directly. [8]
Decentralized Stock Futures Trading
On December 24, 2020, Injective launched decentralized stock futures trading, becoming the first platform to do so. This innovation provided Solstice testnet users with secure access to the $90 trillion stock market without centralized control. It was made possible through the integration of cross-chain data Oracle Band Protocol and Terra's Mirror Protocol, offering trading of stocks like Tesla, Airbnb, Google, and Amazon in the synthetic DeFi space. [9][10]
Equinox Staking
In February 2021, the Injective team introduced Equinox Staking, which serves as the final phase of the testnet. Equinox Staking enabled users to gain early access to Injective's staking features while also allowing them to earn rewards for helping to test the capabilities of the protocol itself.[13]
Equinox Staking, leading up to Injective's mainnet launch in Q2 2021, offered opportunities for both validators and delegators. Validators played a crucial role by globally running nodes for Injective. The platform employed a Tendermint Proof-of-Stake (PoS) mechanism, which used a pseudo-random election process to choose the next block validator based on various factors, including staked tokens. Once the Injective mainnet launched, it would become a community-run network, allowing anyone to become a validator. [13][14][15]
Equinox genesis validators included Chorus, Certus One, InfStones, Just Mining, Helios Staking, UBIK Capital, Audit.One, Hashquark, Forbole, Cosmostation, B-Harvest, StakeWith.Us, and Citadel.One. The public release of Equinox Staking was announced on March 29, 2021.[13][15]
Injective Learn
In January 2021, the Injective team announced the launch of Injective Learn hosted on the Injective blog[62]. Injective Learn is a blockchain education platform that publishes in-depth tutorials for all experience levels. The platform aims to provide a comprehensive educational platform that equips learners to partake in everything Injective has to offer. [16]
Injective Architecture
Injective Protocol comprises five principal components: Injective Chain, Injective Exchange Client, Injective API Provider, Injective EVM RPC provider, and Injective Bridge Contracts on Ethereum. [17]
Injective Chain
Layer-2 EVM Execution Environment
The Injective Chain supports generalized smart contract execution by modularly implementing the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) on top of the Cosmos-SDK, based on Ethermint. By implementing the EVM on top of Tendermint, users enjoy a scalable and interoperable implementation of Ethereum built on proof-of-stake with 1-block finality. [18]
Developers can work with an identical experience for creating DApps on the Injective EVM, with additional benefits including native support for transaction fee delegation and an increased contract bytecode size limit of 100KB.[18] [19]
The following contracts are deployed on the Injective EVM:
Injective DEX Contracts
The Injective DEX Protocol is a decentralized exchange protocol supporting peer-to-peer spot and derivatives trading. The DEX protocol is implemented through smart contracts written in Solidity and is deployed on the Injective Layer-2 EVM execution environment. The 0x V3 Exchange Protocol is used for spot markets and the bespoke Injective Derivatives Protocol is used for derivatives markets. [20]
Injective Derivatives Contracts
The Injective Derivatives Protocol enables traders to create, enter into, and execute decentralized perpetual swap contracts and CFDs on any arbitrary market. [20]
0x V3 Exchange Contracts
Injective leverages the 0x V3 Exchange Contracts for peer-to-peer spot exchange. [20]
Injective Coordinator Contract
The Injective Coordinator Contract follows the 0x Coordinator specification for both spot 0x transactions. The principal purpose of the coordinator is to serve as a liquidity solution enabling more competitive pricing by preventing front-running and allowing for much lower latency trading. [20]
However, unlike traditional implementations that only require one signature from a centralized coordinator, Injective's decentralized coordinator enforces transactions to have a minimum threshold of coordinator signatures for a transaction to be approved. These required signatures are provided through the application logic built into the consensus of the Injective Chain. Each coordinator is bonded through INJ stake and can be slashed for improperly approving transactions. [20][21]
Staking Contract
The Injective Staking Contract maintains a compressed representation of the Injective Chain's validators set and is used to govern the Injective Derivatives Protocol and to process cross-chain ERC-20 token deposits and withdrawals. [20]
Injective EVM Bridge Contracts
The Injective Bridge Contracts encompass a suite of smart contracts managing the two-way peg between Ethereum and the Injective Chain.[20][21]
Decentralized Orderbook
Injective's Decentralized Orderbook is a fully decentralized 0x-based order book enabling sidechain order relay with the on-chain settlement, a decentralized implementation of the traditionally centralized off-chain order relay used by nearly all central limit order book decentralized exchanges. Nodes of the Injective Chain host a decentralized, censorship-resistant order book that stores and relays orders for both spot and derivatives trading. [20]
Trade Execution Coordinator
The Injective Trade Execution Coordinator (TEC) is a decentralized coordinator implementation based on the 0x Coordinator specification. The Injective TEC safeguards trades from front-running using Verifiable Delay Functions and enables lower-latency trading through soft cancellations. [20][21]
Injective Exchange Client
Injective provides a decentralized exchange open-source front-end implementation, allowing users to participate in a decentralized exchange protocol fully permissionless. [22]
The Injective Client is a comprehensive graphical user interface catered towards targeted users. Relayers can host the client on a server to allow users to interact with the protocol. Individuals can also run the client from there locally to directly interact with the protocol. The exchange client interface will also be deployed on IPFS.[23]
Injective API Provider
Injective's model incentivizes liquidity providers in its network, rewarding them for their contribution. This incentivization encourages exchange providers to compete and improve user experiences, ultimately expanding access to decentralized finance (DeFi). [24]
Injective API nodes have two purposes:
Providing transaction relay services: Users can directly interact with the Injective Chain by broadcasting a compatible Tendermint transaction encoding a compatible message type, but doing so would be inconvenient for most users. To this end, API nodes provide users with a simple HTTP, gRPC, and WebSocket API to interact with the protocol. The API nodes then formulate the appropriate transactions and relay them to the Injective Chain. [24]
Serving as a data layer for the protocol: Injective provides a data and analytics API that is out-of-the-box compatible with Injective's frontend interface. The Injective API supports the Injective Derivatives and Spot Exchange APIs for the Injective Client, the 0x Standard Coordinator API, the Injective Derivatives Protocol Graph Node GraphQL API, and other API services required by the Injective Exchange Client. Nodes also provide the full Ethereum JSON-RPC API which connects to the Injective EVM.[24]
Injective/Ethereum Bridge
Users can transfer ERC-20 tokens from Ethereum through the bi-directional Injective Token Bridge, which serves as a two-way Ethereum peg zone for ERC-20 tokens to be transferred to the Injective Chain EVM. The peg zone is based on Peggy and is secured by the proof-of-stake security of the Injective Chain. ERC-20 tokens can be transferred to and from Ethereum to the Injective Chain through the Injective Bridge. The process was inspired by the standard flow as defined by Peggy. [25][4]
INJ Tokenomics
The Injective Protocol token governs the exchange. Injective inflates the supply of INJ to incentivize nodes to stake INJ and participate in the Injective network. The target INJ inflation will tentatively be 7% at genesis and decrease over time to 2%. Over time, the total supply of INJ may be lower than the initial supply due to the Injective’s deflationary mechanism. [26] [27]
Governance
Injective exercises voting rights for platform changes and updates. The first step in the Interject Chain core governance process is to submit a proposal along with a deposit to the blockchain. Once the deposit reaches a certain threshold, the proposal becomes open for voting. In the case of software upgrades, validators signal their readiness to switch, and when more than 75% of validators are ready, their software automatically updates. Community governance is crucial to prevent stagnation or centralization, ensuring the project's ongoing success. [27]
Collateral Backing
Instead of using stablecoins for margin and collateral backing like most common DEXs, the INJ token is used as an alternative for the Injective derivatives market. Injective Protocol takes a different approach with its token utility, having INJ locked up in derivatives contracts to ensure margin is met, in addition to being used for collateral backing or insurance pool staking, where stakers earn interest on their locked tokens. [26][28]
Exchange Fee Value Accrual
This element of the protocol helps to stabilize and maintain a steady price appreciation of the INJ token. The exchange fee value accrual burns any excess tokens that have been accrued after the relayers have been paid. Burning excess fee tokens reduces the amount of circulating supply of INJ, thus increasing demand. [29]
Security
Injective Protocol uses a variety of ways to incentivize people to stake their INJ coins through staking rewards, collateral backing, or governance rights. Staking INJ tokens not only increases the strength and security of the network but also reduces the circulating supply. [30]
Incentivizing Participation
The INJ token incentivizes users to contribute to the Injective Protocol, with liquidity mining incentives and features for the specific market maker and relayer incentives. For market makers, users can receive a net positive fee rebate with periodic distributions based on snapshots of their trading activity, to incentivize liquidity. [28]
Nodes and validators can act as relayers for the other side of the network. Relayers are incentivized to originate orders into the shared order book. Nodes that first discover a make order will receive a calculated ratio of the exchange fee as a reward. [28]
Team
The Injective Protocol founders are Eric Chen (CEO) and Albert Chon (CTO). The team consists of Max Kupriianov as Principal Engineer, Mark Markus as Core Engineer, Bojan Angjelkoski as Core Engineer, Alex Athanasopulos as Core Engineer, Xinran Xu as BD, and Boris Shevchenko as Technical Product Manager. [63]
Partnerships
Arbitrum
On May 8th, 2024, to revitalize INJ token growth, Injective announced its layer-3 network, called "inEVM," in the Ethereum ecosystem. This network, compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), will utilize Arbitrum's Orbit toolkit for its infrastructure, enabling developers to construct customizable chains while ensuring interoperability across various ecosystems such as Ethereum, Cosmos, and Solana. This integration offers new development opportunities within the Ethereum L2 ecosystem while maintaining Injective's fast transaction speeds and low fees. Additionally, transactions on the inEVM network will contribute to the tokenomics of the Injective ecosystem, including the burning mechanisms of its INJ token, which systematically burns a percentage of all protocol fees on a weekly basis. [74]
“The significance of Injective’s integration with Arbitrum extends beyond just building blockchain networks or infrastructure. It enforces the fundamental principle of interoperability – closing the gap between Ethereum, Cosmos and other widely adopted L1s – for an ecosystem where cross-chain assets and liquidity can be truly composable across ecosystems." - Eric Chen, Incentive CEO
Binance Smart Chain
On December 13, 2020, Injective announced a partnership with Binance Smart Chain (BSC) to facilitate the wider adoption of derivatives within the BSC ecosystem. As part of this collaboration, Binance Coin (BNB), the primary asset of Binance, became available on Injective's Solstice V2 Testnet. The Injective team expressed their intention to introduce new derivative products on BSC in the future. They also outlined plans to establish a bridge between Injective and BSC, enabling seamless cross-chain trading and token transfers between the two networks. [31]
Matic
On December 18, 2020, Injective partnered with Polygon (Matic Network) to expand global layer-2 derivatives trading. As part of this collaboration, Injective listed Matic assets on the Injective Decentralized Exchange (DEX) to broaden the range of derivatives markets available. The listing provided Matic traders with an additional platform to engage with Matic tokens. A significant aspect of this integration involved leveraging Matic's layer-2 bridge on Ethereum which allows assets built on the Matic Network to be transferred to Injective, benefiting from their fully EVM-compatible infrastructure. The collaboration was also useful for the Injective team to explore new derivative products that utilize assets built on top of Matic. [32]
Fantom
On January 5, 2021, Injective announced a strategic partnership with Fantom to integrate the Fantom Ethereum bridge into the Injective Decentralized Exchange (DEX). This integration aimed to bring Fantom-based assets, such as synthetics, to Injective users, leveraging Injective Chain's full EVM compatibility. The partnership enhances Injective's offerings in synthetic assets and DeFi applications.[33]
PlasmaPay
On January 21, 2021, the Injective team partnered with PlasmaPay to enable fiat on-ramps for INJ. The partnership focused on adding the INJ token to the PlasmaPay platform while also enabling easy access to Injective’s derivatives exchange through the PlasmaPay dashboard. [34]
AllianceBlock
On January 26, 2021, Injective teamed up with AllianceBlock to introduce decentralized oil and gas futures. This partnership enabled AllianceBlock to innovate and develop new derivative products previously unavailable in the ecosystem. These innovations included the creation of new crypto indices, and enhancing options for crypto investors. Additionally, AllianceBlock benefited by tapping into Injective's fully decentralized derivatives exchange, increasing liquidity. Injective plans to further expand its derivatives trading ecosystem by incorporating AllianceBlock's impermanent loss hedging product in the future. [35]
Acala
On January 28, 2021, the Injective team partnered with Acala in order to bring its novel multi-collateral stablecoin (Acala Dollar) to Injective's Polkadot-based derivative products. This also expanded opportunities for Injective to create new derivative products alongside Acala, further increasing the use cases for aUSD. [42]
UniLend
On January 29, 2021, the Injective team partnered with UniLend to unlock new yield farming opportunities for users who became able to utilize Injective's derivative products on the UniLend ecosystem for borrowing and lending. In addition, INJ was added to the UniLend platform. [43]
Conflux
On February 1, 2021, Injective partnered with Conflux to expand their cross-chain derivatives trading universe. This collaboration was primarily focused on bridging over assets deployed on Conflux onto the Injective exchange to aid in creating and trading new derivative products. [44]
Ocean Protocol
On February 4, 2021, the Injective team partnered with Ocean Protocol to create innovative data derivative products. As a part of the collaboration, Injective users could trade data assets with leverage. In addition, users gained the ability to create entirely new derivative markets that utilize these data tokens. The integration of the price feeds from Ocean was made possible by Balancer, which is built on top of Ethereum. Given Injective Chain's EVM-compatible execution environment for DeFi applications, Injective could acquire dynamic pricing data in order to create both perpetual and expiry futures contracts. [45]
Covalent
On February 5, 2021, Injective announced a technical partnership with Covalent, a unified API that seeks to bring full transparency and visibility to assets across all blockchain networks. By partnering with Covalent, Injective gained further access to real-time and granular blockchain data through the enterprise-grade Covalent API. Such data not only provides valuable insight into the domain of DeFi (Decentralized Finance), but traders could export their trading data with full historical context which allows benchmarking of investor performance and record-keeping as evidence for tax purposes. [46]
Huobi Eco Chain
On February 7, 2021, Injective integrated with Huobi Eco Chain to accelerate cross-chain derivatives adoption. This collaboration enabled traders to seamlessly bridge over Heco assets onto Injective, enabling the creation of new derivative products. In addition, Injective became the first project to introduce decentralized derivatives trading to the Heco ecosystem. [47]
Marlin
On February 11, 2021, Injective partnered with Marlin in order to enable unparalleled trading speeds on Injective derivatives DEX. This collaboration also allowed Injective to begin integrating Marlin's native POND token to be added to Injective. Users gained access to new derivative products that interact with the POND token as an underlying, thereby helping to increase the overall utility of POND itself. [48]
Avalanche
On February 18, 2021, Injective integrated with Avalanche to create various interoperable derivative products. Injective integrated with the newly released Avalanche-Ethereum Bridge (AEB) to create a two-way transfer zone between the Injective Chain and Avalanche. With this integration, Injective launched derivatives that utilize the native Avalanche token (AVAX) and other native Avalanche assets. Injective also explored the addition of entirely new derivative products, such as products related to Initial Litigation Offerings (ILOs). [49]
PARSIQ
On March 16, 2021, Injective partnered with Parsiq to enable fully automated decentralized trading. Users can set custom rules such as executing a buy order when the underlying Bitcoin (BTC) trades at a premium compared to the future. Users can also use a combination of tools to create truly unique solutions across different platforms. Injective also plans to create new derivatives using the native PARSIQ token for use in sophisticated structured products such as indices. They also planned to explore connecting a number of new off-chain apps and devices to allow the creation of more complicated IFTTT functions as well. [50]
SuperFarm
On March 17, 2021, the Injective team launched an exclusive Injective Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) through the partnership with SuperFarm. Users became able to farm Injective NFTs, which provided them with unique benefits such as increased odds of receiving surprise token drops when staking on Equinox. The team also explored the creation and trading of NFTs on the Injective Chain which can allow for the creation of NFTs with unparalleled transaction times and zero gas fees given their unique layer-2 structure. Internally, Injective had been carrying out major NFT collaborations, such as the widely reported Banksy burning, which occurred earlier in March 2021. [51]
Cartesi
On March 20, 2021, Injective joined forces with Cartesi to enable mainstream developer adoption of the Injective Chain. Both companies studied together how to integrate Cartesi’s tools into the Injective ecosystem. The aim was to allow developers to utilize familiar programming tools from the world's leading OS, unlocking big smart contract capabilities offered by the highly interoperable and flexible Injective Chain. This included new frontend interfaces as well as new trading mechanisms altogether, such as an Automated Market Maker. [52]
KardiaChain
On March 21, 2021, Injective partnered with KardiaChain to expand cross-chain trading. KardiaChain was integrated into Injective, offering users more trading assets, including KardiaChain token derivatives. This collaboration allowed KardiaChain to leverage Injective's layer-2 solution for scalability, supporting DeFi and enterprise solutions, such as their mobile payment gateway in partnership with a major Vietnamese telco. [53]
Kylin Network
On March 29, 2021, Injective partnered with Kylin Network to integrate with the Polkadot data economy. Injective also aims to create a number of unique derivative products that can utilize the native Kylin token. [54]
Razor Network
On March 31, 2021, Injective partnered with Razor Network to further expand the oracle ecosystem. The partnership between Razor Network and Injective enabled the Injective DEX to access more assets in a secure and reliable manner, given Razor’s innovative oracle solution. Furthermore, Injective also plans to create new derivative products using the native Razor token. The Injective community will now have access to new indices and sophisticated financial products that are exclusively available through Injective. [55][56]
EasyFi
On April 1, 2021, Injective partnered with EasyFi to introduce the first-ever decentralized synthetic stock future lending products. EasyFi added new markets to its lending module with Injective’s tokenized derivatives acting as collateral markets. Users who hold these derivative tokens of stock futures can add liquidity to the supply side of EasyFi’s lending protocol and borrow assets on the borrowing side. [57]
Big Data Protocol
On April 2, 2021, Injective partnered with Big Data Protocol (BDP) to create and launch structured data token products. Injective and BDP users can soon create and trade data derivatives based on the BDP Data Market. Injective users became able to trade data tokens (based on bALPHA and BDP Data Market data tokens) with leverage. In addition, users have the ability to create entirely new derivative markets that utilize these data tokens. The partnership between BDP and Injective also strengthened the Injective oracle ecosystem, comprised of leading products such as Chainlink, Band Protocol, and DIA. [56]
Persistence
On April 6, 2021, Injective partnered with Persistence to launch liquid staked assets (facilitated by Persistence's pStake application) as a derivative product on Injective. This enabled stakers to unlock the ability to trade their staked assets on Injective's high-performance layer-2 exchange. Therefore, Persistence token holders (and holders of other tokens supported by Persistence’s pStake application) became able to freely trade their staked assets for the first time. [58][59]
Band Protocol
On April 8, 2021, Injective partnered with Band Protocol to operate validator nodes on one another’s networks. Moving forward, this dual validator arrangement will align and strengthen both parties' long-term goals. The Band Protocol team has already set up a node for Injective and has begun to participate in Equinox Staking. Together with Band Protocol, Terra, and Mirror Protocol, Injective launched the world's first decentralized stock futures trading. [60]
Harmony
On April 12, 2021, Injective partnered with Harmony to integrate specifically with Harmony's Horizon bridge, which serves as a bridge between Harmony and Ethereum. Since Injective is already integrated with the Binance Smart Chain (BSC) network, the team is also able to utilize Harmony's BSC bridge in order to port over assets to be traded on the derivatives exchange.[41]
API3
On April 16, 2021, Injective partnered with API3. Adding API3 to the Injective Data Alliance helped further expand the possibilities of Injective's decentralized derivatives exchange. With API3's dAPIs and Airnode-enabled APIs, Injective users accessed APIs and data feeds that enable a wide range of prediction markets, more complex derivatives, and creative financial experiments. [40]
Klaytn
On April 21, 2021, Injective partnered with Klaytn to bring decentralized trading to millions of users within the Klaytn ecosystem. By integrating Injective’s decentralized derivatives protocol, Klaytn users will be able to access a diverse array of new financial markets. In addition, users on Injective will be able to create new markets using assets built on the Klaytn blockchain. [38][39]
UMA
In April 2021, Injective partnered with UMA to launch innovative synthetic products. By integrating with Injective’s decentralized derivatives exchange, synthetic assets on UMA was made available to users. Notable synthetics that both teams introduced include uGas, a solution for hedging against Ethereum gas fees. In addition, Injective integrated an ETH/BTC index to provide an avenue for traders to attain a token that tracks the ETH/BTC price ratio. [36]
Helix on Injective
On September 1, 2022, Helix — a platform for trading unlimited cross-chain crypto assets and perpetual markets with market-leading rebates, went live on Injective. The collaboration provided features like advanced conditional orders and Helix convert, which allow anyone to participate in a range of sophisticated trading setups and lets users swap assets freely, respectively. [64]
Injective x Astroport
On March 9, 2023, the Astroport mainnet went live on Injective. Astroport is an AMM protocol that allows any user to swap or LP crypto assets using multiple pool types, including Curve-style stableswap pools and Uniswap V2-style constant product pools. [68]
The collaboration enabled users to use Injective’s interoperable network, swapping assets from Cosmos, Ethereum, Solana, etc., through Injective’s Wormhole integration. Users can bridge assets to Injective via the Injective Bridge. Then, they can create liquidity pools on Astroport to earn as LPs and start trading new markets. [68]
Before the mainnet launch, the Astroport beta launched on Injective on January 18, 2023.[69]
Funding
Injective Protocol raised a total of $2.6M in funding over 1 round on July 29, 2020, led by Pantera Capital. Other Injective Protocol investors include Binance, Hashed, StartX, CMS Funding, Krypital Group, Bitscale, AU21 Capital, Bitlink Capital, Innovating Capital, QCP Sotera, The Cabin Capital, K42, and Axia8 Ventures. [36]
In April 2021, Injective raised $10 million in a new funding round. Several investors, including billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban, Pantera Capital, BlockTower Capital, Hashed Ventures, CMS Holdings, and QCP Capital, participated in the round. "This was a private placement token sale," Mirza Uddin of Injective Protocol told The Block. "We sold tokens with a lockup period at a $1 billion+ valuation." The lockup period is one year, said Uddin.[36][37][61]
In August 2022, Injective raised $40 Million to accelerate the adoption and growth of Web3 finance. The funding round consisted of Jump Crypto and BH Digital (the crypto arm of famed hedge fund manager Alan Howard). [65]
"This new capital will enable Injective to spur further development aimed at creating the industry-leading blockchain optimized for financial applications. Injective will also continue to invest in its rapidly growing ecosystem in order to solidify its position as the premier destination for Web3 DeFi developers.
The funding will also be utilized to further increase utility for the native INJ token, which powers Injective, while also creating new liquidity avenues for dApps built on Injective." - the blog stated[65]
$150M Ecosystem Fund
On January 25, 2023, Injective launched a $150 million ecosystem fund to support developers building on the Cosmos network. [72]
"Given recent happenings in the crypto ecosystem, a lot of new projects don’t really know which VCs are active and supporting the space. We decided to form this consortium as a signal that these partners are heavily investing in the Injective ecosystem," Injective Labs founder and CEO Eric Chen commented.[73]
The ecosystem group is backed by a consortium of venture capital and Web3 firms, including Pantera Capital, Kraken Ventures, Jump Crypto, KuCoin Ventures, Delphi Labs, IDG Capital, Gate Labs, and Flow Traders. [72]
Developers selected for the fund receive support through “bespoke token and equity investments,” in addition to mentorship, technical assistance, business development, and marketing, Injective said. Projects building decentralized finance and interoperability infrastructure are given the highest priority. Funds were also earmarked for projects focused on building trading platforms, scalability solutions, and proof-of-stake infrastructure. [72]
When asked how funds are allocated, Injective Labs’ co-founder and CEO, Eric Chen, commented:
“The ecosystem initiative’s approach to allocating funds is to focus on finding the right fit for each project, rather than being too stringent on a set number for funding.”
“In terms of stage, the group is primarily targeting early-stage projects (seed to Series B), but follow-on funding can also be considered on a case-by-case basis. The size of the funding awarded will vary depending on the stage and needs of the project, with the goal of providing the right level of support for each project to succeed.” - he added[72]
Solana Layer-2 Testnet
On March 30, 2023, Injective launched a layer-2 testnet that utilizes Solana’s Sea Level Virtual Machine (SVM). Therefore, some Solana developers are able to test their apps for use in the Cosmos ecosystem without changing the programming language or tooling used. [70]
In a conversation with the digital media platform Cointelegraph, a representative from Injective said the name of the new network was “Cascade” and that it uses optimistic roll-up technology. [70]
“This new SVM rollup for the Cosmos IBC world will not only empower developers from Solana to deploy their DApps on Injective, but it will also create more opportunities for users to experience the best Web3 DApps in one integrated network.” - Eric Chen, founder of Injective Protocol
According to the announcement, the layer was created with the help of Eclipse, a company that provides customized zero-knowledge and optimistic rollups for developers. [70]
Liquid Staking Launch
On April 3, 2023, Injective launched liquid staking for its native token INJ. stINJ (the official liquid-staked form of INJ) was made possible by Stride, a specialized app chain for liquid staking. With stINJ, users can unlock liquidity and yield generation opportunities across the Injective ecosystem. In turn, liquid staking introduces more utility for the native INJ token as well. [67]
To celebrate the milestone, Injective stakers received an exclusive Stride (STRD) airdrop, enabling the community to take part in governing the Stride DAO that helped to create stINJ. [67]
Open Liquidity Program
Launched on June 6, 2023, the Open Liquidity Program (OLP) allows users and institutions to participate in the Injective ecosystem while simultaneously earning rewards in the form of INJ. OLP members are able to provide liquidity on Injective’s on-chain orderbook infrastructure in a permissionless manner to attain INJ rewards. From June 13, 2023, eligible participants could earn 60,000 INJ during each epoch (28-day period). [66]
inEVM Layer-2 Testnet
On September 19, 2023, Injective released the testnet of its inEVM Layer 2 rollup solution in partnership with the customizable rollup project, Caldera. The testnet allows Ethereum applications to run natively on the network. [71]
Being compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine, inEVM allows Ethereum developers to deploy their applications, such as decentralized exchanges, on Injective, without the need for code alterations. As per a statement, the launch is part of Injective’s strategy to establish a network of “Electro Chains,” aimed at expanding its Layer 2 ecosystem and enhancing interoperability with other blockchains. [71]
