Injective: May 2021 Update

Welcome to Injective’s May update!

It’s hard to believe that another month has flown by, complete with another dynamic roundup of milestones.

May has been abuzz with mainnet prep as the community enters the first phase on the road to deployment. Injective contributors have been working element by element to test the protocol performance, while simultaneously fine-tuning the parameters of Injective’s governance and insurance fund. Simultaneously, Injective has closed a number of strategic collaborations in the afterglow of the $10 million funding round.

Read below for a full breakdown of Injective's most recent achievements.

May Highlights

The first phase of Injective mainnet commenced
Injective governance was launched for derivatives markets and the Equinox governance walkthrough was released
The Injective Insurance Fund went live
Burnt Finance was selected as the first Injective-incubated project and participated in an AMA to discuss collaborative efforts
Collaborations & Integrations: Injective collaborated with DVision Network to launch NFTs in the metaverse. The INJ-BNB vault was unveiled with collaborator Ramp DeFi. Injective became the first decentralized derivatives exchange to support the RAI stablecoin
Gemini Spotlight: Injective Protocol (INJ): A Cross-Chain Trading Powerhouse
Injective Learn: Decentralized Exchange Designs: Order Book Model Vs. Automated Market Maker (AMM)

1. Road to Mainnet: Phase One

After nearly three years of hard work, the Injective community is ready to begin deploying the initial phase of the Injective mainnet.

Phase one of the Injective mainnet begins with the release of the native Injective Peggy bridge which is a decentralized, highly gas-efficient bidirectional bridge for transferring ERC-20 tokens from Ethereum to the Injective Chain.

In addition to the Peggy bridge, phase one includes the initial protocol governance setup (explained further below) so that the community can help dictate the genesis state parameters such as which markets will be first listed, validator rewards, exchange fees, etc. This helps to ensure that the protocol is community-governed from day one.

This new era marks a major step on the journey towards a new financial paradigm that is freer and more decentralized.

2. Injective Governance

This month Injective governance was launched for derivatives markets. With this milestone, users participating in Equinox staking will be able to propose new derivatives market listings for both perpetuals and futures contracts.

The governance process is a core component of the decentralized protocol and will serve an important role in the upcoming mainnet release. In addition, participating in market proposals via governance will enable users to earn additional APY boosts on Equinox Staking.

In conjunction with this update, the official Equinox governance walkthrough was published here.

3. Injective Insurance Fund

This month the Injective Insurance Fund went live, enabling the community to stake and start earning rewards. To accompany the insurance fund launch, a guide was published to walk users through insurance fund concepts and how to use the Injective Staking Dashboard interface to start staking in insurance funds.

Unlike most exchanges, the insurance fund on Injective is market-specific. That is, there is no common pool of Insurance capital collected, but rather a new fund exists for each derivative market launched on Injective. This way, the risk for underwriting insurance is isolated to each individual market. Community-owned insurance funds are a critical component of a fully decentralized exchange protocol.

4. Burnt Finance Incubation

The first-ever Injective-incubated project was unveiled: Burnt Finance.

Burnt Finance is the first fully decentralized auction protocol built on Solana. After collaborating with Injective on the Burnt Banksy NFT earlier this year, the Burnt team came to realize that there was much more to be done in order to take NFTs, synthetics and DeFi mainstream. Such was the basis for the conception of Burnt Finance, launched within the Injective ecosystem. At the helm of this project is good friend Burnt Banksy who stands to deliver a truly revolutionary auction protocol for synthetics and NFTs.

Injective hosted an AMA with Burnt Finance on YouTube to discuss decentralized auctions, Solana and DeFi.

5. Collaborations & Integrations

This month brought about exciting new collaborations as well as deeper dives into existing ones.

Injective collaborated with DVision Network to explore the opportunity of launching NFT future contracts for items created in the metaverse. This enables users to capitalize on NFT sale prices, thereby allowing them to take part in NFT prediction markets. Moreover, users will be able to interact in new ways thanks to the gamified metaverse experience via the Injective Protocol Center in the Dvision Network.

The INJ-BNB vault was unveiled with existing collaborator Ramp DeFi. This allows INJ-BNB asset owners to unlock liquid capital from their farming assets by collateralizing their LP tokens on the RAMP platform, even as they continue to enjoy APY of up to 129%. Previous projects with Ramp have included a surprise token drop and the development of cross-chain staking derivatives.

Finally, Reflexer integrated the RAI stablecoin with Injective, making it the first decentralized derivatives exchange to support RAI. Bolstering the collaboration with stable assets is a significant milestone for the community and truly showcases the limitless capabilities of the protocol.

6. Gemini Feature

On the heels of the landmark Gemini listing, Injective was featured on their Cryptopedia platform in an in-depth article about our cutting-edge technological innovations. The piece is titled “Injective Protocol (INJ): A Cross-Chain Trading Powerhouse”.

Gemini is one of the largest and most prominent exchanges in the United States. Working alongside Gemini will increase Injective visibility thanks to its renowned exchange.

7. Injective Learn

An Injective Learn article titled “Decentralized Exchange Designs: Order Book Model Vs. Automated Market Maker (AMM)” was published. This piece provides the reader with a breakdown of both of these trade execution models and examines the key differences that can impact trading experiences. It also explains the workings of Injective’s unique Frequent Batch Auction (FBA) model.

Looking Ahead

After a year spent adapting to pandemic challenges, the coast is clearing for community members to resume in-person events. This week enthusiasts are headed to Miami to meet and network with one another for the first time in 2021. Stay tuned for exciting announcements over the coming days!

Injective Labs is hiring and looking to fill roles across all aspects of business. Check out current vacancies and apply here!

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.