Injective November Update: Mainnet and Astro Incentive Program Launch

Hey everyone!

We hope that November was a great month for you — it certainly has been for the Injective community.

First and foremost, the Injective Mainnet was released this month, an astounding feat that required all hands on deck across Injective’s ever-expanding ecosystem.

At the same time, the Injective Labs team participated alongside the industry’s greatest minds at the Cosmoverse Conference in Lisbon, Portugal. Since the launch of the mainnet, trading volumes have soared to never before seen levels and an unprecedented number of users have joined the worldwide community. There’s a lot to cover, so let’s dive in!

November Highlights

The Injective Mainnet was released after the upgrade proposal went live and passed with flying colors. In the following days total trading volume on Injective surpassed $100M. The Injective Pro trading guide launched on YouTube and the Injective Trading Bot became open-sourced.
The Injective Astro Liquidity Incentive Program debuted and $120 Million in incentives were subsequently launched.
The first batch listing proposal went live on the Injective Hub, culminating in the successful launch of decentralized BNB perpetuals. Decentralized ETH perpetual markets also went live and ATOM was listed for trading on Injective.
New Relayers: MarsX (a relayer focused on China) and Unlimited Exchange.
Band IBC Oracle launch equipped Injective to launch world’s first fully decentralized derivatives markets.
Lisbon: Injective Labs CEO Eric Chen spoke at the Cosmoverse Conference. Injective teamed up with Cosmos to kick off the HackAtom VI challenge with $1M in prizes. Injective cohosted the Breakpoint Launch Party alongside other top DeFi projects such as Audius, Burnt Finance, and Lido.
Media Mentions: Staking Rewards, Decrypt, CryptoBriefing, Sophie in Crypto, Yahoo Finance, Coindesk Korea, BlockBeats (China)
Community Updates: A brand new Injective website intro video was unveiled. Injective reached 90,000 followers on Twitter. AMAs included Injective’s Canonical Mainnet Twitter AMA, ICO Drops’ Telegram AMA and Injective’s Market Makers YouTube AMA with Asymmetries.

1. Injective Mainnet

After months of tireless effort across the community, the Injective Canonical Chain Mainnet went live and along with it a new era of decentralized finance was born.

The fully on-chain canonical software upgrade brought unrestricted transfers and trading on the mainnet alongside robust token economics, seamless interoperability, novel products and the most powerful exchange in the world of DeFi. Now users and institutions that onboard can bridge over any amount of assets using the native cross-chain and recently IBC-enabled Injective Bridge.

In the immediate aftermath of the mainnet release, total trading volumes on Injective surpassed $100M. Additionally a number of governance proposals launched, allowing the community to implement new market listings, the first fully on-chain VIP Fee Discount Program and the $120 Million Astro Liquidity Incentive Program.

To support new users and institutions on Injective, the Injective Pro trading guide was posted on YouTube and the Injective Trading Bot became open-sourced.

The Canonical Chain is the start of an extraordinary journey that will take Injective and the entire crypto industry to new heights.

2. Injective Astro

The community voted to launch Injective Astro: A $120 Million Incentive Program to bring liquidity and traders to Injective Protocol.

Initial incentives enabled traders to earn up to 180% in rewards for spot and derivatives market. The first reward epoch for Injective Astro wrapped up with users earning nearly $400,000 in INJ over the span of one week.

Injective Astro marks the most monumental chapter in the history of Injective as it is one of the largest incentive programs not only within the exchange industry but also in all of DeFi.

3. Listings

The first batch listing proposal went live on the Injective Hub culminating in the successful launch of decentralized BNB perpetuals. This update marked the latest synergy with Injective’s lifelong collaborator Binance and enabled users to trade $BNB perps to earn Injective Astro rewards.

Decentralized ETH perpetual markets also went live, allowing users to trade $ETH perps for zero gas fees and Injective Astro rewards.

ATOM was listed for trading on Injective, allowing users to Transfer $ATOM with the IBC-enabled Injective Bridge for sub $1 fees. Additionally users could trade $ATOM to enter the $120 Million Injective Astro reward program.

4. New Relayers

This month the MarsX relayer went live on Injective. MarsX provides unlimited access to spot and perpetual markets with a focus on Chinese-speaking audiences, all while offering Injective’s zero gas fees and high capital efficiency.

The Unlimited Exchange Relayer also launched, allowing users to access various financial markets on Injective’s fast, multi-chain, secure, and zero gas fee exchange protocol.

5. Band IBC Oracle Launch

Injective released fully decentralized derivatives markets with price feeds stemming from the new Band IBC oracle.

Using the Injective Hub, community members can propose new spot or perpetual markets for a wide array of assets. The IBC oracle feature in BandChain allows Injective users to custom request data natively. This means that when the Injective Chain requires a new data feed, the protocol can simply just send a new request and receive a data result guaranteed to have come from BandChain’s decentralized oracle by the IBC core architecture.

This milestone is especially groundbreaking since it marks not only the first time that a Cosmos IBC based oracle is being used by an exchange but also the first time that fully decentralized derivatives markets can be created.

6. Lisbon & Cosmoverse

This past month the Injective Labs team traveled to Lisbon, Portugal to connect with fellow leaders and engineers in the crypto space. Injective Labs CEO Eric Chen delivered a keynote address at the Cosmoverse Conference, discussing topics such as cross-chain derivatives, Cosmos ecosystem, IBC and Injective’s mainnet launch.

While in Lisbon, Injective teamed up with Cosmos to kick off the HackAtom VI challenge with $1M in prizes.

Finally, Injective cohosted the sold-out VIP Breakpoint Launch Party in Lisbon alongside other top DeFi projects such as Burnt Finance, Commonwealth, Figment, Pyth, Wormhole, Audius and Lido.

7. Media Mentions

With the launch of Injective Mainnet and the Injective Astro liquidity incentive program, a flurry of news media globally began to spotlight Injective. A handful of these include Staking Rewards, Decrypt, CryptoBriefing, Yahoo Finance, Coindesk Korea and BlockBeats (China). Sophie in Crypto also spoke at length about Injective in an exclusive YouTube feature.

This is just a glimpse of the extensive media coverage Injective received over the past month. Much more is expected to follow in the coming weeks as more traders are onboarded with the incentives in place.

8. Community Updates

November saw an unprecedented surge in community growth and engagement.

Injective Labs members participated in a number of AMAs across multiple social media platforms. First, the Canonical Mainnet AMA took place as the first ever Injective AMA on Twitter Spaces. ICO Drops held a Telegram AMA with Injective to discuss the mainnet and other recent milestones. Injective hosted the first ever Market Maker AMA, featuring Justin, Founder of Asymmetries Technologies and Max, Head of Financial Markets at Injective.

Other community highlights this month included the brand new Injective website intro video. Injective also reached 90,000 followers on Twitter

Looking Ahead

That’s it for this monthly update, be sure to follow Injective on Twitter and join the Telegram and Discord server for more updates and events!

Until next time Injective family!

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.