Injective Protocol is a fully decentralized layer-2 DEX protocol built for the next generation of decentralized derivatives exchange.
The Injective Chain is a Tendermint-based IBC-compatible blockchain which supports a decentralized orderbook-based DEX protocol and a trustless ERC-20 token bridge to the Ethereum blockchain.
It is the first layer-2 fully decentralized exchange protocol for decentralized perpetual swaps, futures, and spot trading that unlocks the full potential of decentralized derivatives and borderless DeFi. Every component of the protocol has been built to be fully trustless, censorship-resistant, publicly verifiable, and front-running resistant.
By providing the unrestricted and unprecedented ability to express diverse views in the decentralized financial markets, we are striving to empower individuals with the ability to more efficiently allocate capital in our society.
Key Features & Highlights
- Fully Decentralized: Injective transforms an exchange into a decentralized public utility by open-sourcing every single component of the exchange, from the front-end exchange interface to back-end infrastructure to orderbook liquidity.
- Permissionless: Full decentralization turns the traditional business model of an exchange on its head, as we eliminate the technical barrier to entry for users by creating a permissionless and highly performant exchange for both spot and derivatives markets.
- Censorship Resistant: Full decentralization combined with permissionless access ensures an open and unrestricted market, resistant to censorship.
- Community Owned: Nodes on the Injective Chain are incentivized through token economics to act as order relayers, host a decentralized orderbook, and serve as a decentralized trade execution coordinator.
- Scalable: Injective brings an order of magnitude speedup by scaling trade execution and settlement on layer-2.
Injective Protocol’s infrastructure is comprised of three principal components:
- Injective Chain
- Injective Exchange Service
- Injective Ethereum Bridge
Injective Chain
The Injective Chain is a layer-2 sidechain and Cosmos Zone connected to Ethereum.
The chain itself is built on top of Tendermint and allows for the transferring and trading of Ethereum-based assets on the Injective Chain.
The Injective Chain’s primary purpose is to power the Injective Exchange protocol, which is a decentralized peer-to-peer spot and derivatives exchange protocol. The protocol allows individuals to create and trade on arbitrary derivative markets.
Injective Exchange Service
Unlike traditional exchanges which serve as gatekeepers to the crypto industry, Injective transforms an exchange into a decentralized public utility. What truly differentiates Injective is that we bring every component of a decentralized exchange to the public. Everything — from the front-end exchange interface to back-end infrastructure to orderbook liquidity — is provided openly and for free.
This transforms the traditional business model of exchanges as we eliminate the technical barrier to entry for individuals to freely run a highly performative exchange.
Injective’s model rewards relayers in the Injective network for sourcing liquidity. By doing so, exchange providers are incentivized to better serve users as they compete amongst each other to provide better user experiences. Thus, this allows users from all around the world to access decentralized financial markets.
Injective Chain
The Injective Chain is the core backbone for Injective’s layer-2 derivatives platform.
Beyond the standard imported modules from the Cosmos-SDK, the Injective chain itself is comprised of 5 unique modules:
- auction
- exchange
- insurance
- oracle
- peggy
Injective Accounts
Injective defines its own custom
Account
type that uses Ethereum’s ECDSA secp256k1 curve for keys. This satisfies the EIP84 for full BIP44 paths. The root HD path for Injective-based accounts ism/44'/60'/0'/0
.Addresses and Public Keys
There are 3 main types of
Addresses
/PubKeys
available by default on Injective:- Addresses and Keys for accounts, which identify users (e.g. the sender of a
message
). They are derived using theeth_secp256k1
curve. - Addresses and Keys for validator operators, which identify the operators of validators. They are derived using the
eth_secp256k1
curve. - Addresses and Keys for consensus nodes, which identify the validator nodes participating in consensus. They are derived using the
ed25519
curve.
Address bech32 Prefix Pubkey bech32 Prefix Curve Address byte length Pubkey byte length Accounts inj
injpub
eth_secp256k1
20
33
(compressed)Validator Operator injvaloper
injvaloperpub
eth_secp256k1
20
33
(compressed)Consensus Nodes injvalcons
injvalconspub
ed25519
20
32
Address formats for clients
EthAccount
s can be represented in both Bech32 and hex format for Ethereum’s Web3 tooling compatibility.The Bech32 format is the default format for Cosmos-SDK queries and transactions through CLI and REST clients. The hex format on the other hand, is the Ethereum
common.Address
representation of a Cosmossdk.AccAddress
.- Address (Bech32):
inj14au322k9munkmx5wrchz9q30juf5wjgz2cfqku
- Address (EIP55 Hex):
0xAF79152AC5dF276D9A8e1E2E22822f9713474902
- Compressed Public Key:
{"@type":"/injective.crypto.v1beta1.ethsecp256k1.PubKey","key":"ApNNebT58zlZxO2yjHiRTJ7a7ufjIzeq5HhLrbmtg9Y/"}
- Addresses and Keys for accounts, which identify users (e.g. the sender of a