On November 8th, 2021, the Injective Mainnet was released, marking the beginning of a new chapter for the entire Injective community. As the first blockchain optimized for building financial applications, Injective’s Mainnet ushered in a new era for all of Web3.
Since its launch, Injective has reached a number of significant milestones, helping to cement itself as the first sector-specific layer one built for finance. In just the past year alone, Injective launched an interchain smart contracts layer, processed over 120 million transactions, implemented an innovative token burn model and completed one of the largest capital raises in the industry from leading institutions. It also became one of the leading Cosmos IBC zones, integrated with prominent projects to increase interoperability, introduced some of the fastest growing dApps and much more.
This year witnessed a number of prominent institutions joining Injective in furthering its mission. Both the crypto and traditional finance industries took notice as Jump and BH Digital joined Injective in a $40M funding round. The raise will not only help bolster Injective’s continued success but also help expand its reach exponentially as Injective moves into its second year.
Injective could not have ascended to such great heights without the global community of contributors, validators, institutions and partners. As it looks towards its next year, here is a brief overview of the journey thus far and how the ecosystem will continue to work together to create the fastest layer one blockchain optimized for finance.
How Injective began
Injective originally set out to rectify a pressing need in the world of finance: to create a truly free and fair financial system for all. This in turn could only be achieved by creating financial applications that are on par with the performance of centralized counterparts while still retaining complete decentralization.
At its very inception, Injective joined the first-ever cohort of the Binance Labs incubation program. Inspired by the world of cryptography, Injective Labs co-founders Eric Chen and Albert Chon started initial experimentations with Ethereum before quickly realizing that the difficult problems at hand could not be rectified by a generalized blockchain since they are neither customizable or performant enough for building robust financial applications.
This led the two founders to the promised land of Cosmos where they became two of the earliest contributors to the nascent interchain ecosystem. While still early, it was undeniable even at that time that the great promise of Cosmos as a whole sought to bring about a world of connected blockchains. Injective began to create a number of innovative Web3 modules such as the first fully on-chain orderbook and derivatives that can be utilized to build a whole host of powerful interchain dApps.
Ultimately, Injective helped to create the first sector-specific blockchain that would be both MEV resistant and highly scalable. Helix, the premier decentralized derivatives exchange, was one of the marquee dApps launched on top of Injective. Helix rapidly became one of the fastest-growing exchanges in history, surpassing $1 billion in trading volume within its first 30 days.
How Injective Grew
Since launch, Injective has exceeded all expectations and built a robust set of modules to aid developers in building truly innovative financial applications that would not be possible anywhere else.
Injective Web3 modules on-chain:
- Orderbook
- Derivatives
- Binary Options
- Oracle
- And much more!
These modules can be used in a plug-and-play manner to help builders quickly create sophisticated applications. For instance, if developers wanted to build a decentralized predictions market app, they could combine the on-chain orderbook with the derivatives and binary options module to launch their dApp within just days. This is unheard of in any other blockchain where a person would likely have to spend months if not years to create an application that would be largely subpar compared to the one created on Injective.
As a blockchain built for finance, contributors to Injective worked tirelessly to provide solutions that would be needed for any future Web3 developer.
Connected Ecosystems
A primary focus for Injective during its first year was interoperability. Finance applications, even more so than everyday Web3 dApps, need to provide a seamless option to interact with a diverse array of chains. Having a highly interoperable environment would enable builders to provide users with access to assets from distinct chains while easily abstracting away complex cross-chain transactions.
Injective integrated some of the most prominent chains within crypto, becoming the first chain within the Cosmos ecosystem to provide compatibility with layer one platforms, such as Ethereum and Polkadot. In addition, Injective is IBC-enabled, allowing the blockchain to seamlessly transfer assets from chains such as Evmos. Injective is also the only blockchain to integrate Wormhole, which would make Injective the primary gateway for assets from Solana and Avalanche to enter the broader Cosmos ecosystem.
With the ability to integrate multiple chains, Injective also paved the way to integrate multiple non-custodial wallets, including MetaMask, Ledger, Leap, Cosmostation, Keplr, Torus and more. This further allows users from distinct crypto ecosystems to easily onboard onto dApps built on Injective.
New Integrations and Growth
Injective also worked to rapidly expand its ecosystem with novel integrations and collaborations.
Injective enabled CosmWasm, allowing for new applications to be built using Injective’s unmatched Web3 modules. New integrations also brought a number of unique launches, such as the first ever Bored Ape perpetuals on Injective exchange dApps, which was accomplished via an innovative collaboration with NFTBank. The integrations also helped showcase just how much more advanced Injective is relative to any other solution in the market today, providing users and builders with innovative new products at every turn.
Injective still remains the only blockchain capable of supporting automatic smart contract execution. In addition, developers of Injective have vastly optimized the chain to enable it to reach just a 1 second block time with the lowest transaction fees in the market. Injective is now not only the best blockchain for building finance-focused dApps, but also one of the fastest networks ever created.
The latest integration with CosmWasm became a significant development this year. The CosmWasm chain upgrade created a multichain smart contracts layer for Injective, and with the ability for any developer to utilize smart contracts on Injective, a slew of projects submitted proposals to build on Injective. With the latest ecosystem additions, and the current live projects on Injective, Injective is building the most diversified financial ecosystem in existence. The momentum for builders is further amplified by the extensive set of Web3 modules provided by Injective that are impossible to find elsewhere. This in turn allowed for greadingbreaking dApps to be built such as next generation predictions markets (i.e. Frontrunner), fiat on-ramp providers (i.e. Kado) and exchanges (i.e. Wavely).
Here is a list of some amazing projects building on Injective already:
ApolloDAO
White Whale
Frontrunner
Wavely
Aperture
Dexterium
INJDojo
Bitcorn Exchange
MarsX
"Project X"
Helix
Injective Punks
xAccounts
Qwerty Exchange
The Injective network was further bolstered by a number of leading validators joining the active set such as ChainLink DLT service provider MatrixedLink, DSRV, B-Harvest, Imperator, StakeLab, White Whale and Informal Systems. A number of prominent Cosmos KOLs also began to run Injective nodes, such as Danku and Stakecito, bringing further attention to the Injective ecosystem.
Community Events
The culmination of Injective’s first year also saw many events that helped to strengthen not only the Injective mission but also the global community.
Injective contributors traveled across the globe to Portugal, Medellin, Dubai, Singapore and more to continue spreading the message that Injective is the blockchain built for finance.
A few key events over the past year included the following:
Avalanche Summit
Binance Blockchain Week
Blockwork's Permissionless
CMC's The Capital
DCentral
NFT NYC
Cosmoverse
Mainnet
Google Cloud Founders Summit
xHack by Wormhole
What’s Next
In only its first year since mainnet launch, Injective worked to rapidly grow the only blockchain optimized for finance, pioneering new solutions for builders worldwide while also sharing its mission with the broader Web3 community. And while Injective’s ecosystem of dApps, integrations, validators and institutions continue to grow everyday, it is only just getting started.
Moving forward, Injective will continue to show exactly why it is the blockchain reshaping and democratizing finance for all. The Injective community has accomplished a great deal in just its first year and there is far more in store for the upcoming year as Injective seeks to become bigger than ever before!
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.
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