Injective (INJ) is the native asset of Injective (native Layer-1, Cosmos-SDK-based, with a built-in EVM execution layer), a blockchain built for finance-focused decentralized applications. It supports exchanges, derivatives platforms, and prediction markets through Cosmos-SDK and EVM-compatible smart contracts, letting developers build interoperable financial applications.
Founded in 2018, Injective was incubated by Binance Labs, targeting liquidity, latency, and efficiency problems common to decentralized exchanges at the time.
Injective (INJ) differentiates itself by directing protocol fee revenue into a recurring on-chain burn auction rather than a general treasury, tying network usage directly to token scarcity. Under the "INJ 2.0" mechanism, 60% of fees generated across all dApps on the chain feed a weekly buy-back-and-burn auction open to ecosystem participation.
Recent integrations, including Coinbase's x402 protocol for autonomous AI-agent payments and trade-receivables tokenization pilots with POSCO International and LG CNS, extend Injective toward regulated real-world-asset and agentic-finance use cases.
INJ functions as both a governance and utility token, used for staking, fee payment, and on-chain voting. Holders stake INJ with validators and delegators to secure the Proof-of-Stake network and earn staking rewards.
INJ holders also vote on-chain on network governance proposals. INJ pays network fees and is the asset purchased and burned in Injective's weekly on-chain auction, funded by a share of dApp-generated fees, giving holders a direct economic link to protocol activity.
INJ's circulating and total supply stood at 100,000,000 INJ as of 2026-08-30. Market capitalization was near $498.3 million, with fully diluted valuation equal to market cap since circulating supply equals total supply.
Net emission is deflationary: a weekly on-chain auction burns INJ purchased with a share of dApp fees, and Injective Improvement Proposal IIP-617 ("INJ Supply Squeeze"), passed with 99.96% approval, added monthly "Community BuyBack" burns on top of the existing auction, building on the earlier "INJ 3.0" proposal to reduce supply over time.
Injective Protocol (INJ) launched via an Initial Exchange Offering on Binance Launchpad, selected October 13, 2020, with the public sale held October 20, 2020 at $0.40 per INJ.
The chain's 2018 founding predates its October 2020 token launch by roughly two years.
Injective (INJ) runs on its own native Layer-1 blockchain, built with the Cosmos SDK and secured by Proof-of-Stake consensus. Validators and delegators stake INJ to produce and finalize blocks.
The chain incorporates a built-in EVM execution layer, allowing Ethereum-compatible smart contracts to run alongside Cosmos-SDK modules on the same network. This dual-environment design lets Injective interoperate with both Cosmos and Ethereum-based ecosystems while maintaining its own independent validator set.
Injective was founded in 2018 by Eric Chen (CEO) and Albert Chon (CTO). Chen, a Chinese-American entrepreneur who studied finance and computer science at NYU, previously researched blockchain protocols and trading strategies at Innovating Capital. Chon is a Stanford computer-science graduate who previously worked at Amazon Web Services.
Both co-founders were named to Forbes' 2024 "30 Under 30" Finance list.
Injective Labs is the founding development company behind the Injective blockchain and has maintained the protocol since its 2018 incubation. It was one of eight winners of Binance Labs' first incubation program, and Injective became the first Binance-Labs-incubated project to debut a token sale on Binance Launchpad, in October 2020.
Injective Labs has since drawn institutional backing from Pantera Capital, Jump Crypto, Mark Cuban, BlockTower, Hashed Ventures, CMS Holdings, QCP Capital, KuCoin Ventures, Delphi Labs, and Kraken, and it launched a $150 million ecosystem fund to support developers building on the chain.
Injective (INJ) is governed through on-chain, DAO-style voting in which INJ holders submit and vote on network upgrade and policy proposals. Per available records, all governance proposals to date have passed.
Governance extends to economic parameters: Injective Improvement Proposal IIP-617 ("INJ Supply Squeeze") passed with 99.96% of votes in favor, and the earlier "INJ 3.0" proposal set supply-reduction policy via community vote. INJ is also staked to validators, giving delegators a practical role in both network security and proposal outcomes through their staked voting weight.
Recent Injective (INJ) developments include Coinbase launching native INJ trading, deposit, and withdrawal support, and Injective filing an SEC transfer-agent application targeting regulated tokenized securities.
These developments were reported as of 2026-08-31.
CertiK audited the Injective protocol at launch and, per CertiK's Skynet tracker, rates Injective 86.21 ("A").
In July 2026, Injective Labs suffered a supply-chain compromise: an attacker used a compromised maintainer account to publish a backdoored version of the @injectivelabs/sdk-ts npm package and 17 related packages, exfiltrating wallet recovery phrases and private keys at wallet creation. The malicious release was live for approximately 49 minutes before detection and was remediated with a clean version; no user funds were confirmed lost.