Injective

Injective is a Layer 1 blockchain built specifically for financial applications. Rather than offering a general-purpose environment and leaving developers to build financial primitives from scratch, it provides those primitives as protocol-level modules, including a fully on-chain order book, derivatives, and oracle infrastructure.

The chain is built with the Cosmos SDK and uses Tendermint-style proof-of-stake consensus, giving it fast finality and native compatibility with the Inter-Blockchain Communication protocol. It also supports bridging to EVM chains such as Ethereum and to non-EVM chains including Solana.

The on-chain order book

The most consequential design choice is the central limit order book implemented in the chain itself. Most decentralized exchanges use automated market makers because order books are expensive to run on general-purpose chains. By building the order book into the protocol, Injective lets applications share a single liquidity layer and offers a trading experience closer to conventional markets.

The chain also implements frequent batch auctions to reduce front-running, since transactions within a batch clear at a uniform price rather than being ordered by fee.

The INJ token

INJ has a total and circulating supply of 100 million tokens and no stated hard maximum, with issuance adjusting based on the proportion of supply staked. It is used for staking to secure the chain, for governance, as collateral in derivatives markets, and for fees.

A notable mechanism is the weekly burn auction. A share of the fees generated by applications on the chain is pooled and auctioned, with participants bidding in INJ, and the winning bid is burned. This ties supply reduction directly to network activity rather than to a fixed schedule.