About

Injective Protocol is a decentralized finance (DeFi) platform that offers a DEX for derivatives and futures trading. It allows for permissionless trading with zero gas fees and operates on a layer-2 blockchain, ensuring high speed and scalability. The platform supports various financial markets, including cryptocurrency, synthetics, and NFTs.

History

Injective was first publicly announced as a project within the Binance Labs Incubation Program in 2018. Eric Chen and Albert Chon founded the project to create an IBC-enabled network that allowed Ethereum-based assets to be traded on its decentralized exchange (DEX).

On Nov. 30, 2020, Injective’s first testnet, Solstice, went live for early access users. On Dec. 21, 2020, the Solstice testnet publicly launched, allowing any user to participate. On Feb. 2, 2021, Equinox Staking began on testnet, allowing validators to begin onboarding. Equinox Staking later went public for all testnet users on March 29, 2021, enabling delegation.

On June 26, 2021, Injective initiated the first of three phases for a mainnet launch by deploying The Injective Bridge. The bridge enables cross-chain transfers of ERC-20 tokens on Ethereum to Injective. On June 30, 2021, the second phase began with the launch of the Injective Canary Chain, where users could trade using real assets for the first time on Injective. On Nov. 8, 2021, Injective’s mainnet officially launched with the release of Injective’s Canonical Chain.

On Jan. 28, 2022, the Injective Bridge was upgraded to a V2 version, thereby enabling assets from IBC-enabled chains to be bridged to Injective. On July 5, 2022, Injective upgraded and enabled smart contract support through CosmWasm. Furthermore, Wormhole’s integration on Dec. 15, 2022, enabled assets from Solana and various EVM-compatible blockchains to also be bridged to Injective.

On Jan. 25, 2023, the project team announced the Injective Ecosystem Group, a $150 million initiative to fund development within the Injective ecosystem. Then, the project team introduced a new form of INJ incentives with the launch of the Open Liquidity Program (OLP) on June 6, 2023. The OLP aims to incentivize users to provide liquidity to the Injective order book. On Aug. 16, 2023, the INJ 2.0 upgrade went live, enabling all applications built on Injective to have the option of contributing additional tokens to the weekly Burn Auction pool.