Injective Protocol (INJ)
Injective Protocol is a fully decentralized layer-2 DEX protocol built for the next generation of decentralized derivatives exchange. The Injective Chain is a Tendermint-based IBC-compatible blockchain that supports a decentralized orderbook-based DEX protocol and a trustless ERC-20 token bridge to the Ethereum blockchain.
Basics
- Based in:
- Founded in: 2018, Q3
- Their main offering of a DEX is not live yet (19-10-2020), you can sign up on their waitlist.
- Canary Chain release: 30-6-2021. Dubbed the "Canary Chain", Injective Protocol currently only supports the Peggy Bridge, staking, governance, the oracle module, and the insurance fund.
- Mainnet Canary Chain: Spot Trading Launch (28-7-2021).
- Mainnet release: 17-11-2021
- A L2 decentralized derivatives exchange protocol incubated by Binance Labs.
- From Crypto Briefing (14-10-2020):
"Injective Protocol is building an environment for builders to erect powerful DEXes capable of derivatives products. Ethereum traders seeking a decentralized alternative to leaders like Uniswap, plus more complex trading products, may find Injective's value proposition enticing. Disclosure: One or more members of the Crypto Briefing Management team are investors in Injective Protocol."
History
Audits & Exploits
- Bug bounty program can be found [insert here].
- Injective is Audited by Informal Systems (28-7-2021).
Bugs/Exploits
Governance
Admin Keys
DAO
Treasury
Token
Launch
- From Crypto Briefing (14-10-2020): It has not been officially launched yet.
Token allocation
| Binance Launchpad Sale | 9.00% of the total token supply |
| Seed Sale | 6.00% of the total token supply |
| Private Sale | 16.67% of the total token supply |
| Team | 20.00% of the total token supply |
| Advisors | 2.00% of the total token supply |
| Ecosystem Development | 36.33% of the total token supply |
| Community Growth | 10.00% of the total token supply |
Utility
- Node operators earn fees for routing and matching orders.
- According (12-10-2020) to Binance Research: Governance, exchange fee has buy-back-and-burn and staking.
- More can be read in their tokenomics section of their documents (19-10-2020).
- From Citadel One (12-7-2021):
"Protocol governance, Exchange fee value capture, Derivative collateralization, Liquidity mining, Staking."
Token Details
Burns
Has community/AI powered token burns (3-12-2024).
Stablecoin
Coin Distribution
Tech
- Whitepaper can be found here (2018 Q3).
- Code can be viewed here.
Implementations
- Built on: The protocol leverages the Cosmos SDK and 0x order book design (14-10-2020).
- Programming language used: Vue, Go, Solidity, SCSS, Python, Shell, JavaScript and Rust.
How it works
- From Crypto Briefing (14-10-2020):
"Injective’s architecture isn’t an automated market maker (AMM). Instead, it leverages a key feature from 0x protocol and is order book-based. In the Injective environment, relayers are replaced by nodes. Node operators earn fees for routing and matching orders. And like 0x relayers, node operators could each be independent DEXes within a larger network."
- Injective Protocol is comprised of four principal components (12-10-2020):
- "Injective Chain
- Injective's smart contracts on Ethereum
- Injective API nodes
- Injective front-end interface
The Injective Chain is a fully decentralized sidechain relayer network which serves as a layer-2 derivatives platform, a Trade Execution Coordinator (TEC), and decentralized orderbook. Injective Chain utilizes the Tendermint consensus mechanism and the core protocol logic is implemented through Cosmos-SDK modules."
Fee Mechanism
Upgrades
- Launched its multichain CosmWasm smart contracts (7-2022).
- A list on it's 2021 achievements can be viewed here (4-3-2022). It includes testnets, partnerships and funding rounds. "Injective burn auctions begin (12-2021) and over $700,000 worth of INJ is burned in less than a month"
- Dubbed the "Canary Chain", Injective Protocol currently (7-2021) only supports the Peggy Bridge, staking, governance, the oracle module, and the insurance fund.
Staking
- Unbonding Period 21 days and can change through governance (12-7-2021).
Validator stats
- Injective Protocol currently has 19 validators in Equinox Staking (12-7-2021).
Liquidity Mining
"Injective is launching an incentives program called Astro, which is worth $120 million to entice users to join the platform. The incentives program is expected to run for the next five years."
"Injective’s community will be able to capture value via liquidity mining programs that have been natively built onto the network to spur continuous growth."
Interoperability
- From Binance Research (12-10-2020):
"The Injective Chain provides a two-way Ethereum peg-zone for ETH and ERC-20 tokens to be transferred to the Injective Chain as well as an EVM-compatible execution environment for DeFi applications. The peg-zone is based on Peggy and the EVM execution is based on Ethermint."
- From State of Stake (29-10-2020):
"Injective integrates with Polkadot to expand Injective’s decentralized cross-chain trading capabilities — it’s made possible by Moonbeam, which provides an Ethereum-compatible smart contract platform powered by Polkadot that makes it easy to build natively interoperable applications."
- From Paradigm (24-2-2021): "Injective will integrate with the newly released Avalanche-Ethereum Bridge (AEB) to create a two-way transfer zone between the Injective Chain and Avalanche."
- Will create a bridge with Moonbeam (18-10-2020).
Scaling
- Injective partnered with Matic to expand Layer-2 Derivatives trading globally.
Other Details
- Uses (19-10-2020) OpenZeppelin contracts, The Graph and Hummingbot.
Oracle Method
- They do have documentation on using an oracle, but it is unclear what kind (19-10-2020).
- Bandchain will be used through IBC (15-11-2021).
Compliance
Their Other Projects
Roadmap
- Can be found [Insert link here].
- From Crypto Briefing (14-10-2020):
"Outside of spot trading, they will also allow builders to create more complex derivatives products. Only perpetual swaps and contracts for difference (CFD) are currently available."
- From Binance Research (12-10-2020):
"2020 Q4
- Release of public testnet V1.
- Launch of Incentivized Testnet Trading Competition.
- Launch of ERC-20 token.
2021 Q1
- Release of public testnet V2.
- Release of Incentivized Staking Competition and Ethereum bridge.
2021 Q2
- Launch of mainnet V1.
- Implemention of bridges to multiple blockchain networks.
- Adding of liquidity mining (yield farming) and staking incentives.
- Swapping of token, from ERC-20 to native chain.
2021 Q3
- Launch of 10+ perpetual swaps and expiry futures.
- Launch of cross-chain yield generation.
2021 Q4
- Launch of DAO governance for community governed listings and market creation.
- Launch of staking pools on insurance funds.
2022 Q1
- Launch of institutional exchange interface.
- Launch of crypto-backed traditional financial derivatives."
Usage
- Injective has reached over 92 million on-chain transactions. dApps built on Injective have generated over $7 Billion in cumulative volume (10-8-2022).
Projects that use or built on it
- As Injective is a protocol, other DEXs could be build on the Injective Protocol. You can view all ecosystem projects and collaborators on the official Injective ecosystem page.
Competition
- 0x, Uniswap
- DEXs, derivative exhanges
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Most market leaders, like Uniswap, do not offer derivatives products.
- Claims (14-10-2020) to be scalable (Cosmos SDK), interoperable and that it can evade front-running; "To solve this problem, Injective introduces Verifiable Delay Functions (VDFs). VDFs are essentially time stamps that can be placed on transactions to ensure an orderly and fair sequence of orders."
Cons
- Early stage and faces an uphill battle to attract users away from Ethereum (19-10-2020).
- Zero gas fees (19-10-2020).
Team, Funding, Partnerships, etc.
Team
Advisors
According to their website (19-10-2020):
- Andreas Weigend; ex-chief scientist Amazon
- Bobby Cho; partner at CMS
- Sandeep Naiwal; co-founder Matic
- Calvin Liu; Compound strategy lead
- Eric Wang; Parity Technologies ecosystem development lead
Funding
- Prisma; "Eric Chen and Mirza" were part of the first Prisma round (31-5-2023)
- Injective has raised $40M. The funding round consisted of Jump Crypto and BH Digital (10-8-2022).
- From Decrypt (17-11-2021):
"Injective is launching an incentives program called Astro, which is worth $120 million to entice users to join the platform. The incentives program is expected to run for the next five years."
"Injective Protocol has raised $10M during private fundraising round. @mcuban, @PanteraCapital, @BlockTower, @hashed_official, @cmsholdings, and @QCPCapital, participated in the round. The tokens were sold with 1 year lockup period at a $1B+ valuation."
- "One or more members of the Crypto Briefing Management team are investors in Injective Protocol." (14-10-2020)
- Has raised $2.6 million in a seed funding round. Led by Pantera Capital, the round also saw Asia-based QCP Soteria, Axia8 Ventures and Boxone Ventures, Bitlink Capital and others participate, Injective announced Wednesday.
Partners
- On its website it called the following companies its 'family' (19-10-2020): Binance, Pantera, Hashed, XCP Capital, StartX, K42, CMS and Bitlink Capital.
- Kava announced (26-8-2020) the strategic cooperation with Injective Labs, creators of Injective Protocol.
- According to Binance Research (12-10-2020) it is partners with Elrond, Findora, Frontier and Wootrade.
- Partnered with Terra, Mirror Protocol, and Band Protocol to access the $90 trillion stock market in a permissionless manner. They all have links going back to Stanford (10-1-2021).
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