Injective: June 2021 Update

Welcome to Injective's June update!

It’s no secret to the community that June was a groundbreaking month for the project as a whole.

The first two phases of the Injective mainnet went live, the Equinox exchange was revamped, key collaborations with major projects fell into place, and so much more.

Read below for a full breakdown of all the most recent milestones.

June Highlights

Both phase one and phase two of the Injective mainnet commenced, while SCB 10X joined the leading cohort of mainnet validators.
Full spot and perpetuals trading went live on a fully revamped Injective exchange.
Equinox Epic Tasks were released to stress test the DEX and boost staking APY by 3%
Strategic collaborations fell into place with top projects such as NEAR Protocol, MDEX, Stacks, and Formation Fi.
This month gave rise to a number of community initiatives including community events at Bitcoin Miami, a YouTube AMA with FungBros, becoming verified on Twitter and Telegram, as well as an exclusive Injective NFT drop with SuperFarm.
A weekly crypto news initiative was established to help the community stay on top of the most important industry news.

1. Mainnet: Phase One and Two

First and foremost, the Injective community saw the release of both phase one and phase two of the mainnet. Users can now transfer any ERC-20 token into the Injective Chain using the Injective Peggy Bridge. They can also stake, participate in all governance processes (e.g. creating and voting on new markets) and underwrite insurance funds.

Please Note: Users must unstake their INJ from the Equinox staking dashboard here. You can then stake your mainnet INJ in the mainnet staking dashboard found here. The mainnet and Equinox staking dashboards are separate.

The Injective Canary Chain kicked off the official start of phase two, and was officially deployed on June 30 at 1:00 PM UTC with the genesis state found here.

SCB 10X joined Injective’s star-studded cohort of validators on the mainnet. SCB is one of the largest commercial banks in Southeast Asia and its digital technology investment technical arm, SCB 10x, already has an impressive track record of securing Proof-of-Stake blockchains.

2. Equinox Spot and Perpetuals Trading Release

This month also brought about an entirely revamped Injective exchange. As a result, you can now test spots and perpetual contracts for a wide array of markets on Injective in preparation for the next mainnet phase. Additionally, anyone who has staked INJ is able to both propose new markets and vote on new listings, allowing the entire listing process to be governed by a decentralized community of stakeholders.

This release marks the culmination of a number of major improvements across the frontend user interface as well as core backend logic for Injective’s orderbook model.

Coverage of the exchange upgrade was also featured on BSC News.

3. Equinox Epic Tasks

The Equinox Epic Task will remain live until the release of the canonical chain in phase three! Users can earn a staking APY boost by submitting 50 separate trades across 5 different markets, and earn a net positive PNL. Users have time until phase three of the mainnet to complete this task.

4. Collaborations & Integrations

Other wins this month included locking in four new strategic collaborations, adding to the ever-expanding ecosystem.

Injective collaborated with NEAR Protocol to expand the multi-chain trading universe.

Injective linked up with MDEX to provide INJ holders with the opportunity to accelerate their earning potential through INJ staking and liquidity mining.

Injective integrated with Stacks to bring fully decentralized Bitcoin derivatives to the protocol.

Injective joined forces with Formation Fi to create multi-chain risk-optimized yield farming derivatives.

5. Community

Even in the midst of intense technical developments, there were a number of opportunities for community building this past month.

Injective friends both old and new came together at Bitcoin Miami, enjoying a night of networking and crypto conversations.

Injective Labs CEO Eric Chen was interviewed by popular YouTubers Fung Bros in an AMA alongside Burnt Banksy.

Injective saw an unprecedented surge in social media engagement and became verified on Twitter, Telegram, and Telegram Announcements channels.

An exclusive Injective NFT drop with SuperFarm was announced. Now INJ holders can farm Astros and redeem them for top-tier limited NFTs.

6. Weekly Crypto News

Beyond the Injective Ecosystem, here are the main headlines that moved the markets in June:

Bitcoin globalization: This month El Salvador made Bitcoin Legal Tender. To spin up country-wise adoption and usage, the government is giving out $30 in Bitcoin to any adult citizen who downloads and verifies their identity via the official government E-wallet. If claimed by everyone, that would equal 3,440 BTC or $117M.

De-chinafication of Bitcoin: In response to an accelerating mining ban in China, “hashrate migration” is real. Miners are moving to western nations and states such as Texas in droves. Our read of the month is Nic Carter’s “Go West, Bitcoin!” Article, where he unpacks the greatest shakeup in the geographic makeup of bitcoin mining.

Steady institutional interest: Micro-Strategy is tripling down on Bitcoin, issuing $1B of its Class A shares to spend on “the acquisition of bitcoin; Cathy Wood’s ARKInvest partnered with 21Shares to create another Bitcoin ETF; A16Z raised $2.2bln for its third crypto fund.

Steady Elon’s interest: As overheard on Twitter, Elon is planning to meet Jack Dorsey to have “THE talk” on the future of Bitcoin in July.

What’s Next?

Closing the curtain on Equinox Staking marks the end of an era, but ushers in the biggest one by far to date as the Injective mainnet starts to become a reality.

With the final phase in Injective’s mainnet journey ahead, all collaborators, users, and enthusiasts are instrumental in moving forward. The coming weeks will be monumental as Injective showcases an unmatched decentralized exchange protocol to the world.

There’s so much more to come over the next few weeks, so don’t miss out on real-time updates through Injective’s Twitter, Discord, and Telegram channels. Also don’t forget to subscribe to the all-new Injective Orbit Newsletter for weekly and monthly updates!

About Injective

Injective is a lightning fast interoperable layer one blockchain optimized for building the premier Web3 finance applications. Injective provides developers with powerful plug-and-play modules for creating unmatched dApps. INJ is the native asset that powers Injective and its rapidly growing ecosystem. Injective is incubated by Binance and is backed by prominent investors such as Jump Crypto, Pantera and Mark Cuban.