Injective (INJ) tokenomics

The native token of the Injective Protocol is INJ. It was initially launched as an ERC-20 token on Ethereum with an initial total supply of 100 million tokens. The tokenomics are designed to be dynamic, balancing inflation (minting) and deflation (burning) mechanisms to maintain a soft cap of 100 million tokens.

Issuance Mechanism

The INJ token supply is subject to both inflationary and deflationary forces:

• Inflationary Rewards (Minting): New native INJ tokens are minted and distributed to validators in the active set as inflationary rewards. The inflation rate is dynamic, ranging between 5.00% and 10.00% based on the desired staking rate of 85.00%. This mechanism incentivizes network security through staking.
• Deflationary Mechanism (Burning): Injective employs a unique Token Burn Auction mechanism to reduce the overall token supply.
  • Historically, 60% of fees collected on exchange decentralized applications (dApps) built on Injective were directed into a weekly auction basket.
  • With the INJ 2.0 upgrade, this mechanism was enhanced to allow any dApp built on Injective—including those focused on lending, NFTs, and prediction markets—to contribute up to 100% of their collected fees to the auction basket.
  • Users bid on the basket of assets using INJ, and the winning bid amount in INJ is immediately burned, permanently decreasing the token supply. To date, over 5.7 million INJ have been burned through this mechanism.

Allocation Mechanism

The initial total supply of 100 million INJ tokens was distributed across several categories. The largest portion was dedicated to ecosystem growth and development.

The initial token allocation breakdown is as follows:

Usage and Incentive Mechanism

INJ serves multiple core utility functions within the Injective ecosystem:

Core Utility

1. Payment (Gas Fees): Native INJ is used to settle transaction gas fees on the Injective chain. Users can pay extra gas fees to increase the likelihood of a transaction being included in the next block.
2. Medium of Exchange: INJ is used as a medium of exchange across the ecosystem, including trading on decentralized exchanges (DEXs), buying NFTs, and taking out loans.
3. Collateral: INJ can be used as collateral for derivative trading pairs where it is the quote asset, supporting leveraged exposure to assets.
4. Governance: INJ is the governance token for the on-chain governance system. Tokenholders can stake INJ to participate in voting on all protocol parameters and modules, such as community pool spends, exchange parameters, and asset listings. A deposit of 500 INJ is required to initiate an on-chain governance proposal.

Incentive Programs

1. Staking Rewards: As a Delegated Proof-of-Stake (DPoS) Layer-1 network, users can operate a validator or delegate their INJ to an active validator to secure the network and earn INJ rewards. Rewards are sourced from inflationary rewards and block rewards. The advertised Annual Percentage Rate (APR) for staking was approximately 16.66% as of November 27, 2023.
2. Trade and Earn Rewards: This program distributes INJ rewards to trading participants for incentivized pairs. The Injective Improvement Proposal #93 (IIP-93) introduced a staking requirement for the Trade & Earn program to encourage long-term loyalty. Users earning above a threshold (e.g., 100 INJ) must stake INJ to receive further rewards.
3. Open Liquidity Program (OLP): Native INJ tokens from the community pool are continuously allocated to the OLP to incentivize users to provide liquidity to the Injective order book. The OLP operates in 28-day epochs.
4. Trading Discounts: Users who stake native INJ receive discounts on trading fees when interacting with Injective’s order book, incentivizing token lock-up.
5. Exchange Application Incentives: Applications built on Injective that originate an order using the order book receive 40.00% of the exchange fees they generate.

Locking Mechanism and Unlocking Schedule

Locking Mechanism

Staking INJ involves a locking mechanism: tokenholders delegating to an active validator must wait a 21-day unbonding period to unstake their tokens. If the validator is not part of the active set, the delegated tokens are unstaked immediately.

Unlocking Time and Vesting Schedule

The initial token allocations were subject to vesting schedules, with the final major unlocks for the Team and Advisors allocations occurring in January 2024. The initial total supply was 100 million INJ.

The following table details the most recent and significant historical unlock events for INJ: