Injective

INJ is the coin of Injective, a proof-of-stake blockchain for trading apps, used to pay fees, secure the chain and fund token buybacks.

Injective is a layer-1 blockchain built for financial applications. It runs on the Cosmos SDK, and its mainnet went live on 8 November 2021. Unlike most chains, it has a built-in exchange module with on-chain order books for spot, perpetual futures and binary options markets. Injective Labs, led by CEO Eric Chen, develops the software, and Injective says it was incubated by Binance and is backed by Jump Crypto and Pantera.

INJ is the native coin. It pays transaction fees, is staked with validators to secure the network, and is used to vote on governance proposals. New INJ is issued to stakers at 2.2% to 4.4% a year; it was 4.4% in September 2026, when about 47% of the roughly 123 million INJ on-chain was staked.

The chain collects trading fees from its exchange module. 40% goes to the app that brought the order, and 60% is set aside to buy back and burn INJ; originally this was a basket auctioned for INJ, which was then burned. Since November 2025 a monthly Community BuyBack, which Injective says replaced that winner-take-all auction, lets holders commit INJ to be burned in return for a share of ecosystem revenue.

Much of the activity is trading. In a one-day snapshot in September 2026, perpetual futures made up about four fifths of on-chain trading volume, mainly on Helix. Injective is also pushing into tokenised stocks, mortgage data records and stablecoin payments, and an affiliated company registered as an SEC transfer agent in August 2026.