LianGuai Observations | Has Injective’s narrative come to an end after a rise of over 14 times this year?

Observing the Rise of LianGuai Is Injective's Narrative Coming to an End After Its Over 14-Fold Growth This Year?

Author: Climber, LianGuai

Looking back at 2023, how many people will regret missing out on Injective and be filled with regret?

On November 30th, OKX announced the listing of Injective (INJ), making it the latest mainstream CEX to adopt the project, following Binance, HTX, and Bitget. And within this year, the price of Injective has skyrocketed from $1.25 to a recent high of $19.20, with a staggering increase of 1436%. It can be said to be far ahead of other Layer1 projects.

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The cryptocurrency market is no stranger to blockchain projects that have seen returns of hundreds or even thousands of times. However, to achieve a 14-fold increase during a bear market like Injective is truly worth attention. But in terms of the magnitude of the increase, it has reached a high point at this stage, and the INJ price has not surpassed it since November 11th. In addition, the positive news of being listed by the top CEX OKX has not stimulated the INJ price either.

So does this mean that Injective’s market value has reached its limit? Or is the current situation just a bottleneck period, and breaking through it will lead to endless possibilities?

The meteoric rise of Injective

In 2023, the cryptocurrency market is still struggling in a bearish trend, with most mainstream blockchain projects still striving to reach their previous peak in terms of TVL. However, Injective has continuously achieved new highs this year, with the price reaching $19.20 at one point. It’s just one step away from the peak of $25.30 during the bull market in May 2021.

According to CoinMarketCap data, the price of Injective was around $1.25 at the beginning of this year. Since then, it has been rising steadily, reaching a new high of $19.20 on November 11th. As of now, INJ has achieved a growth rate of 1436%, far surpassing the single-digit growth rates of its competitors.

Moreover, the market value of Injective has also risen to $1.516 billion, ranking 41st on the token rankings of this platform, surpassing OP, AAVE, and MKR.

Furthermore, according to the token holding data and distribution provided by Dune user @lydiapita, it can be seen that since January 2021, there has been an overall growth in the number of token holders, with an explosive growth starting at the beginning of 2023, from 12K to 24K.

As for the distribution of INJ holdings, whales account for half, indicating that the coin has strong support from large investors. Retail investors account for about one-third, indicating the attention and market popularity among retail investors.

In addition, crypto researcher Miracle Abel stated that as of October 2023, Injective has processed over 300 million transactions, solidifying its position as a leader in the DeFi field.

However, on DeFiLlama, Injective ranks quite low in terms of TVL, only ranking 62nd with $15.15 million. This indicates that the public chain still needs to expand its user base and develop more thriving ecosystem applications in order to have more on-chain assets storage.

Soaring 14 times, what’s behind Injective?

Injective is a Layer1 network built on Cosmos-SDK, using Ignite (formerly Tendermint) proof-of-stake consensus mechanism to achieve instant deterministic secure transactions, supporting the building of DeFi applications on its chain.

Injective provides plug-and-play modules, including order book and derivatives trading modules, allowing any developer to launch financial applications. Plus, with smart contract functionality, developers can easily build complex applications using leading protocols.

In short, Injective enables secure, fast, and interoperable transactions on multiple blockchain networks. With its fast blockchain built for finance and plug-and-play Web3 modules, Injective’s ecosystem is shaping a highly interoperable, scalable, and truly decentralized financial application system.

Being able to smoothly rise more than 14 times in a bear market, Injective’s magnificent performance this year is backed by multiple factors.

Firstly, Injective has gained support from a large number of applications, well-known market makers, and funds, such as Cumberland, QCP Capital, CMS, and Bitlink, who are all early supporters of the project and have provided advice for the initial design and development of the protocol.

Its investment background is also very strong, with investors including Binance Labs, LianGuaintera Capital, NBA Dallas Mavericks (formerly the Dallas Mavericks) owner Mark Cuban, Jump Crypto, etc. It raised a total of $52.6 million in funding, including $2.6 million in seed funding in July 2020, $10 million in strategic funding in April 2021, and $40 million in funding in August 2022.

Secondly, Injective’s breakout in 2023 cannot be separated from the proactive layout of the project party in the previous year.

Since the launch of the Injective mainnet in Q4 2021, in Q1 2022, Injective released Cross-Chain Bridge V2 version, launched the CosmWasm smart contract layer on the testnet; in Q2, Binance announced support for Injective (INJ) network upgrade and hard fork; in Q3, CosmWasm smart contract layer officially launched, binary options module launched, and cross-chain accounts enabled; in Q4, Wormhole cross-chain bridge integrated into Injective, and Injective integrated fiat currency gateway.

From this, it can be seen that Injective is able to improve and develop step by step with the strong support of its resources through deep integration with Binance, ultimately achieving scale, systematic development, and productization.

And this year, Injective has not stopped its rapid development.

Earlier this month, Injective announced its integration with Kava, expanding access to stablecoin assets such as USDT, where USDT can be bridged directly from Kava to Injective’s IBC.

In October, Injective partnered with Google Cloud to integrate Web3 financial data into Google Cloud BigQuery. Injective’s core chain data will be accessible in BigQuery through Google Cloud’s exclusive data sharing platform, Analytics Hub.

In August, Injective announced an upgrade to its tokenomics, significantly increasing the amount of INJ burned every week, thereby reducing the overall token supply and actively mitigating token inflation issues.

Earlier this year, Injective launched a $150 million ecosystem fund to accelerate the adoption of interoperability infrastructure and DeFi. This fund has received support from previous investors such as LianGuaintera and Jump, as well as Kraken Ventures, Kucoin Ventures, Delphi Labs, Flow Traders, Gate Labs, and IDG Capital.

Recently, Injective also collaborated with Google Cloud to launch the Injective Illuminate hackathon. The prize pool is $100,000, encouraging developers to build projects in the fields of DeFi, NFT Fi, SocialFi, GameFi, and tools.

In addition, Injective positions itself as an L1 solution for DeFi and derivatives. After the start of the crypto bear market, the spot trading volume of major CEXes plummeted sharply, and top exchanges could only increase trading volume through listing or increasing token leverage to maintain their reputation and performance.

A representative event is Binance’s recent listing of well-known projects such as BLUR, ETHW, BIGTIME, etc., and Bigtime, which focuses on copy trading business, has also maintained overall performance growth through derivative trading. At the same time, OKX is expanding its existing token trading range.

From this, it can be seen that the playing field of DeFi has gradually upgraded, which is both a trend in the development of the crypto industry and the current needs of investors. Therefore, Injective’s product content perfectly meets the market demand and fills the gap of the original products’ lack of richness and completeness.

Is there still room for growth?

As mentioned earlier, after reaching a high point of $19.20 on November 11th, Injective’s price has not been able to break through to new highs. As of the time of writing, INJ has been hovering around $16 for 20 days. The news of OKX’s listing yesterday did not seem to have a significant impact on the price trend. This raises the question of whether the listing effect of OKX is weak or if Injective’s upward potential has reached its limit. The market has different opinions.

Netizen @miyoga believes that OKX’s listing of INJ means that OKX has entered the Injective ecosystem project, and the OKX wallet will also support Injective Dapps. NFT projects on Injective will also be gradually listed on the OKX wallet. Overall, the future of INJ looks promising.

And as for the future of Injective, as early as October, market analyst @苏白Vediez mieast pointed out that Injective was born at the peak of the bull market, but it encountered a bear market during its growth phase. Many ecological projects did not expand, but still have decent infrastructure. In the future, with the development of DeFi and NFTs, there will be at least a 10x return.

However, some netizens also expressed that the current INJ price is already too high and listing on OKX did not boost it, so it is inevitable to have a pullback. It may be worth continuing to wait and observe. @币期待 True to crypto previously pointed out sharply that as a financial trading public chain, Injective does not have significant advantages compared to other competitors in terms of ecology and functionality. In the situation where confidence in ETH, DeFi, and other platforms is lacking, the rise of INJ is a signal to sell.

Summary

Compared to star project public chains like Ethereum, Solana, Polygon, Arbitrum, Optimism, Starknet, etc., Injective’s market discussion and presence are not as high. However, with the rising market capitalization of INJ, the project’s visibility is gradually spreading. The name of the founder of Injective Labs has already been included in the Forbes “Under 30 Finance 2024” List.

In addition, the kings of the crypto market often appear in unexpected ways, so it is worth continuing to observe the development of Injective to avoid being caught off guard in the future.

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