Introducing the Injective Token: Pioneering a New Decentralized Economy

A new era has begun with the unveiling of the Injective Token, powering a new decentralized finance ecosystem on Injective Protocol.

Background: On Decentralizing the Economic Model of Exchange

In this day and age, exchanges act as gatekeepers of the crypto industry, wielding an undue amount of influence and extracting rent from users through exchange fees.

In centralized and decentralized exchanges alike, the majority of the value extracted from exchange fees is either captured by a centralized party or is at best, distributed to liquidity providers who are forced to subject themselves to impermanent loss. In both cases, the bulk of the value extracted does not accrue to individual users/token holders.

Injective transforms exchange into a fully decentralized public utility that’s owned and controlled by the community of INJ holders, as opposed to a single centralized entity. This community-driven philosophy underpins the entire protocol, where value is exclusively captured by the users and Injective token holders.

Below are some of the new ways you can participate and become a stakeholder in the Injective ecosystem!

Create and Trade New Derivative Markets

The easiest way to participate is to trade on Injective's decentralized derivatives exchange protocol. The protocol is fully open and permissionless, allowing users to freely trade, and even create new derivative markets on the Injective Protocol. As an early Injective user, you’ll also earn INJ rewards for trading on the protocol and have the chance to earn extra INJ prizes the more profitable your trades are.

Host an Exchange Relayer Node

One of the most profitable ways to participate in the Injective ecosystem is to source liquidity into the protocol by hosting an exchange relayer node. By hosting an exchange relayer node, you’ll be rewarded with a generous 40% of the exchange fees from orders that you source.

As an exchange relayer, you could earn rewards by providing an improved interface tailored towards an underserved locale or offer a specialized API catering to a specific group of traders. Influencers can also leverage their reach by earning on-chain referral rewards or offering on-chain fee discounts to new users.

Exchange Fee Auction

Every month, the remaining 60% of the exchange fee from each trade on the protocol is aggregated and auctioned to the public through a buyback-and-burn. Here, INJ token holders can bid using INJ to purchase the aggregate exchange fee. All INJ proceeds from this auction are then burned, thus deflating the token supply.

Stake INJ on the Injective Chain

As an INJ token holder, you can stake your tokens by delegating to an existing Injective Chain validator or you can become a validator yourself. By doing so, you’ll earn staking rewards for securing the Injective network and will also be able to participate in the governance of the protocol.

Participate in Governance

The INJ token is used to govern key components of the Injective Chain including the futures protocol (such as new listings), exchange parameters, and protocol upgrades.

Develop on the Injective Chain

The Injective Chain hosts a fully EVM-compatible execution environment allowing you to create arbitrary new decentralized applications with smart contracts written in Solidity. While the opportunities to create new decentralized applications are limitless here, developers can leverage the Injective Futures Protocol’s innovative tokenized perpetual swap primitive as a composable building block to create new DeFi applications.

A New Era

As the dawn of a new era sets in, the Injective community powers forward on the journey to create a more free and inclusive financial system through decentralization.

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.