Injective Protocol Launches its Mainnet for Fully Decentralized Derivatives Trading and a $120 Million DeFi Incentive Program

Injective, the first universal DeFi protocol for cross-chain derivatives trading, has announced the successful public launch of its main network alongside a $120 million protocol incentive program named Astro for traders, market makers and DeFi projects.A newly minted unicorn, Injective streamlines fully decentralized trading with a fast and secure layer-2 exchange that allows individuals to create unlimited financial markets for assets such as crypto, commodities, NFTs, forex, and much more. Injective enables 24/7 trading and allows its users to trade with zero gas fees. All transactions are entirely transparent and secured by Tendermint-based proof-of-stake consensus with instant finality. Recently, major institutions such as Siam Commercial Bank and Binance have put their institutional weight behind Injective as well as they act as validators for the protocol.Injective is a Cosmos SDK based chain that enables decentralized trading for a diverse array of financial instruments such as perpetual swaps, expiry futures, and traditional spot markets. Unlike its counterparts such as FTX and dYdX, every component of the Injective is built to be fully trustless, censorship-resistant, publicly verifiable, and interoperable while providing an intuitive user experience comparable to centralized exchanges. Injective has already seen substantial levels of adoption with over one billion dollars in daily trading volume across more than 25,000 unique monthly users. Renowned market makers and funds such as Cumberland, QCP Capital, CMS, and Bitlink are all early backers of the project and helped provide advice on the initial design and development of the protocol itself. Injective rose to prominence last year as they became one of the first protocols to list commodities such as gold on the exchange.To accompany the mainnet launch, Injective is also releasing a $120 Million incentive program named Injective Astro to help promote liquidity and trading on the protocol. To help put this number into perspective, $120 Million will make Injective’s Astro program one of the largest liquidity incentive programs within the orderbook DEX space and by far the largest within the entire Cosmos ecosystem.The program will begin by allocating the funds specifically to market makers and traders who utilize the protocol. Through the Trade & Earn program, traders will be able to earn a rebate for every trade that they place on the exchange rather than having to pay a fee as is the case on all other platforms today. To further encourage user loyalty, Injective has introduced a decentralized VIP system to progressively reward users as they increase participation and volume. This is the first time an exchange VIP system has been implemented fully on-chain with zero intermediaries.Injective Astro will extend far beyond the trading incentives to further catalyze ecosystem growth through a multi-stage process. Injective Labs also plans on assigning more funds toward incentivizing new projects to build on Injective. So far Injective Labs has publicly backed NFT auction house Burnt Finance which famously worked with Injective to burn Banksy painting and minted an NFT after the act. The news was covered across all major media and the video itself has garnered over ten million views in China alone.The frontend interface created by Injective Labs called Injective Pro was released last month. Injective Pro restricts all US users in order to properly comply with guidelines set forth by governing bodies such as the CFTC. Uniquely however, developers can build new exchange interfaces on top of Injective which allows individuals to rapidly create region or asset specific exchanges while being able to leverage the powerful backend protocol. For instance, a developer can deploy a decentralized exchange that only focuses on futures trading.Over the past few months, Injective has taken steps to ensure complete decentralization of the protocol itself. Every transaction on Injective is verified by a decentralized group of validators that currently secure some of the fastest growing projects in the industry today such as Cosmos and Terra. Users can view all trades on-chain via the Injective Explorer regardless of whether the trade was placed via a frontend interface or the institutional grade Injective API. All markets launched on Injective must be approved by a DAO vote from which Injective Labs abstains. All of these aspects empower the global community to dictate the future of Injective.The launch of Injective mainnet and the Astro incentive program follows the release of the Injective Bridge – an IBC-enabled cross-chain bridge that supports seamless Cosmos and Ethereum-based token transfers. Injective also touts its fast withdrawal times back to Ethereum which currently stands at less than 10 minutes which is far lower than other layer-2 solutions where withdrawals can take up to a week to process.“Our mission at Injective has always been to build the most powerful cross-chain protocol for completely decentralized derivatives trading. As Injective interconnects new chains, the ecosystem will continue to serve as a DeFi gateway for trading across the multi-chain universe. Injective’s Ethereum-native tooling allows users to simply create and trade new cross-chain markets without the typical roadblocks associated with making transactions across distinct blockchain networks,” said Eric Chen, the 23-year-old computer science dropout co-founder and CEO of Injective Labs.The team at Injective Labs has been building it since 2018 and validated the product  with the largest funds, market makers, and institutional traders. Injective was one of the first projects to be incubated by Binance Labs and recently raised a $10 million round from the likes of Pantera Capital and Mark Cuban.About InjectiveInjective is the first cross-chain protocol built for decentralized finance applications. On the Injective exchange, anyone can access, create, and trade unlimited DeFi markets such as futures and perpetuals. Developers can also build cross-chain Ethereum-compatible projects that are lightning fast and achieve instant transaction finality. Injective is backed by a prominent group of stakeholders including Binance, Pantera Capital and Mark Cuban. For more information please visit https://injectiveprotocol.com/ 

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