Injective launches a $150 million ecosystem plan. What are its early ecosystem projects?

Author: Xiangxiang Xiang, ChainCatcher

Recently, the DeFi-optimized public chain Injective announced the launch of a $150 million ecosystem initiative, making it one of the largest funds in the Cosmos community.

Many well-known institutions active in the Web3 and traditional finance sectors have participated, including Pantera Capital, Kucoin Ventures, Jump Crypto, IDG Capital, Gate Labs, Delphi Labs, Flow Traders, and Kraken Ventures.

It is reported that the Injective ecosystem fund aims to grow the number of ecosystem users and trading volume by supporting the best builders and projects on Injective, focusing on areas such as interoperability, DeFi, trading, PoS infrastructure, rollups, and scalability solutions. With this new ecosystem fund, on January 27, Injective announced its first hackathon, offering up to $1 million in prizes and seed funding to further support Web3 builders.

Injective Protocol was initially a decentralized trading protocol based on a public chain, later built as an independent Layer 1 protocol on the Cosmos SDK framework to support developers in building DeFi and Web3 applications with lower barriers to entry. Since last year, the Injective ecosystem has been gradually expanding. This article will analyze the unique and outstanding applications within this ecosystem, referencing the Injective Ecosystem Map compiled by the crypto data website RootData.

1. How did Injective evolve from a protocol to an ecosystem?

In November 2021, the Injective mainnet was officially launched. The protocol provides a fully decentralized order book trading infrastructure for accessing cross-chain spot and derivatives markets with zero gas fees.

Unlike DEXs running on Ethereum, BSC, or other Layer 1s, Injective offers trading services on its own execution layer, allowing third parties to build trading platforms on Injective without permission. All trading platforms built on it share the same order book, maximizing capital efficiency. The rapid block times and instant finality granted by the underlying Tendermint Core enable the protocol to handle a large volume of trading demands while maintaining on-chain security.

Previously, ChainCatcher interviewed Eric Chen, co-founder and CEO of Injective Labs, who believes that the reason there is still a huge opportunity in DeFi infrastructure is due to the sensitivity of crypto derivatives to rapidly changing prices and the high demands for execution and settlement functions, which necessitate higher infrastructure requirements, making execution on public chains with relatively high block limits more challenging. Additionally, many unreasonable limitations and flaws exist in EVMs, which are often obscured by speculative reward strategies, making improvements difficult. Therefore, Injective decided to create a blockchain network focused on DeFi.

As a result, Injective optimized several aspects when developing the public chain: including a fully decentralized open-source public chain with high security; fast, stable, zero gas fees; compatibility with Cosmos IBC for interoperability; complete customization and optimization for DeFi; and MEV resistance provided by Injective's frequent batch auction consensus mechanism.

Before the mainnet launch, Injective experimented with various products. In addition to dozens of perpetual contracts and spot markets, Injective also launched products for traditional asset markets such as synthetic stocks, oil, natural gas, gold, and forex futures during the testnet period. Its ambition is to become a "complete toolbox" for decentralized financial markets, thus Injective also integrated many other financial products, such as lending services and trading guilds, to enhance its financial service attributes.

Injective Ecosystem (Updated January 2023), Source: Injective Official Website

2. Major projects in the Injective ecosystem

The above image shows the ecosystem map disclosed by Injective, but its definition of the ecosystem is relatively broad. RootData mainly includes early-stage DApps that have already launched on the Injective mainnet and are built around DeFi.

Data Source: RootData

1. Helix, formerly Injective Pro, is a decentralized crypto trading platform for trading cross-chain spot and perpetual contract markets. Its main features include zero gas fees and a user-friendly interface. In January, Helix launched the Solana ecosystem meme coin Bonk (BONK) perpetual futures in the Cosmos ecosystem.

2. Astroport was once one of the largest AMM protocols on the Terra network, later joining the Injective ecosystem and launching its public testnet on Injective in January. Astroport is a complex AMM protocol that allows users to trade crypto assets using various liquidity pools, including Curve-style stable trading pools and Uniswap v2-style constant product pools. Astroport AMM can work in conjunction with Injective's on-chain order module, creating a more capital-efficient environment for traders.

3. Dexterium, a global decentralized asset trading platform. Dexterium allows users to trade across various financial markets, also supporting zero gas fees and a decentralized order book, emphasizing speed, decentralization, community-driven features, and security. The so-called "community-driven" concept refers to the Trading Guilds feature launched on the platform, where users can replicate the trading strategies of their favorite traders for potentially higher returns. Additionally, individuals can authorize a guild with the most suitable trading strategy to trade on their behalf.

4. Frontrunner, a decentralized sports prediction trading platform. Users can buy and sell stocks in the sports domain. Unlike traditional sports betting, where users place bets and wait, Frontrunner allows users to have complete control over their portfolios, enabling them to dynamically adjust positions as odds change. The project announced the completion of a $4.75 million seed round financing over a month ago, led by Susquehanna Private Equity Investments, with participation from SOMA Capital, Toy Ventures, Ledger Prime, and WAGMI Ventures.

5. INJ Dojo, a decentralized trading community. It stimulates user enthusiasm through community trading competitions, leaderboards, points, and other gamified methods, selecting some high-quality trading strategies for other users to reference.

6. Injective Punks, an original NFT series collection, pioneered an open-source NFT standard based on Injective, launched in September 2022, with the subsequent goal of establishing a no-code NFT launchpad and trading platform. Written in Rust.

7. White Whale, a cross-chain liquidity protocol for Cosmos. It deployed the first lending and AMM application on Injective, allowing users to generate profits based on arbitrage strategies, with arbitrageurs able to set up their bots using Injective infrastructure for zero-collateral flash loans.

8. Wavely, a decentralized crypto & derivatives trading platform. It supports zero gas fees, with TPS exceeding 10k+, and has recorded over $7 billion in total on-chain trading volume to date. It supports more than 11 interconnected blockchain native tokens (such as INJ, DOT, LINK, APE, EVMOS, etc.) and allows up to 10x leveraged trading derivatives.

In addition to the above protocols, the cross-chain investment ecosystem Aperture and the recently completed $3.5 million financing cross-chain trading and liquidity routing protocol Squid also plan to integrate with Injective.

3. Injective's cross-chain ecosystem

The cross-chain ecosystem is crucial for liquidity in DeFi. In addition to the above native applications, in 2022, Injective also made significant efforts to bring liquidity from multiple chains through cross-chain interactions, as well as through the Injective cross-chain bridge and Ethereum mainnet interoperability.

Currently, Injective has enabled transfers between networks such as Terra, Cosmos Hub, and Ethereum. Previously, leading builders from Terra, such as ApolloDAO, Astroport, and ApertureFinance, have chosen to collaborate to seek to bring more TVL, liquidity, and exposure to the Injective ecosystem.

Additionally, the Web3 universal messaging protocol Wormhole has officially integrated with Injective, bringing well-known L1 and L2 blockchain networks (such as Solana, Avalanche, Aptos, etc.) into Injective.

At the beginning of February, Injective announced that users could transfer Solana assets to Injective via Injective Hub or Portal Bridge. Furthermore, Injective Hub has integrated Phantom Wallet, providing Solana users with a familiar experience when using Injective.

Moreover, the Injective ecosystem payment infrastructure Kado has integrated with the U.S. Automated Clearing House (ACH), wire transfers, Visa, and Mastercard, supporting deposit and withdrawal services in over 150 countries/regions, allowing users to convert fiat and digital assets using their non-custodial wallets, providing a simpler fiat-to-crypto exchange experience for all users.

In addition to focusing on the above aspects of ecosystem development, in April 2022, Binance began supporting native INJ deposits and withdrawals, making Injective one of the first Cosmos chains to receive support from the Binance mainnet; additionally, in June 2022, Injective integrated Polkadot assets, making it one of the primary channels for cross-chain Polkadot assets to enter the Cosmos ecosystem.

Overall, the Injective ecosystem is still in its early stages, but it is believed that with the incentive of hundreds of millions of dollars in ecosystem funds, Injective is expected to further expand its influence through the community, improve its ecosystem, increase the adoption rate of the Cosmos ecosystem, and promote the continuous and steady growth of decentralized trading platforms.