2020•5 MIN READ
The Project Spotlights series is where we’re interviewing projects developing on Binance Smart Chain (BSC). Previously, we shared interviews with ForTube, BurgerSwap, Bounce, Arkane Network, AnySwap, Bitquery, Blink, Tenderly, Defistation and PARSIQ. The next project you’ll learn about is Injective Protocol, powered by Binance Launchpad and incubated by Binance labs before launching on Binance Smart Chain.
1. Please describe Injective Protocol to those unfamiliar with it. What’s your vision and mission?
Injective Protocol is the first layer-2 decentralized exchange protocol that unlocks the full potential of decentralized derivatives and borderless DeFi. Injective enables fully decentralized trading without any restrictions, allowing individuals to create and trade unlimited markets.
The current financial system is broken and too inefficient. Injective’s goal is to turn exchanges and derivatives into a public utility where there are no middlemen taking hefty cuts from every transaction. DeFi has been promising in taking the first step towards breaking down the centralized infrastructure of the traditional exchange markets. Our mission is to take it a step further and do the same for derivatives while offering zero gas fees, faster transactions, and an unparalleled trading experience.
We aim to facilitate borderless finance and become the global CME/CBOE alternative in the future. To achieve this goal, we may extend our derivatives offering beyond crypto native assets and explore traditional instruments that have routinely faced friction from geopolitical borders or trust issues from achieving global access. That’s our ultimate vision.
2. When was the idea behind Injective Protocol born, and what led to it?
Injective was born out of our frustration with the exchange status quo. Centralized exchanges have primarily dominated the digital asset market and continued to suffer from major operational failures. These exchanges were heavily regulated, suffered from frequent hacks, and required users to divulge sensitive personal information to make trades. On the other hand, DEXes was not user-friendly and also were routinely exploited with hacks and front-running.
Starting in 2018, Injective sought to change this paradigm with an unmatched decentralized exchange solution. With us, users would have a platform that was fully decentralized while still having a user-friendly interface that they may have been accustomed to on centralized platforms. This enables Injective to truly bridge together the decentralized and centralized worlds into one robust DEX that will become the clear market leader over time.
3. Tell us something about your team’s background.
Our team comes from world-class universities and some of the most respected companies in the world today. Our core team members hold degrees from the likes of Stanford and Harvard. In addition, we have worked at leading tech companies such as Amazon. Lastly, we possess a strong background in finance with experience at hedge funds such as Two Sigma, which currently is the largest quantitative hedge funds.
Our experience with blockchain technology and cryptography emphasizes many years as well, having worked at crypto-focused funds and designing our own unique token standards that later was adopted by several protocols.
To create a market-leading exchange, it is crucial to assemble a team with extensive technical and financial knowledge. This is what makes the Injective team so unique, we can harmoniously blend together our prior experiences with software, digital assets, and trading to create the most innovative exchange.
4. What are the main advantages of Injective Protocol for the user, compared to a similar project from a mainstream financial market?
The most significant fundamental difference between Injective Protocol and other exchanges is that we make the exchange a decentralized public utility that gives our users and community the resultant value capture from our exchange protocol.
Our technology brings an order of magnitude speedup by scaling trade execution and settlement on layer- 2, all while being fully decentralized. Injective’s fully decentralized nature uniquely allows individuals to permissionlessly create and trade derivative markets that even centralized exchanges cannot support.
5. Let’s say I want to start using Injective Protocol. Where do I start? Where can I find some how-to guides?
We actually have our testnet running right now. You can check it out here.
The user experience is quite intuitive, so even beginners can find their way around with ease. If someone requires additional help, they can always look at our walkthrough guide (Link) or technical documentation (Link) as well.
6. Why did you decide to migrate/build on Binance Smart Chain?
Binance has long served as a valuable partner for Injective. We were first incubated by Binance Labs back in 2018 and later became the first-ever incubated project to host a successful IEO on Binance Launchpad. Binance’s primary asset, BNB, is already available on Injective’s Solstice V2 Testnet. It is only natural to deepen this relationship further with a BSC integration and leverage the Binance ecosystem to reach new user bases that may prefer building on BSC. We are also excited to be the first derivatives DEX that bridge BSC assets.
7. What do you hope to see next from the BSC community?
We hope to see more developers on BSC as Binance Chain builds a more friendly community for different developers. As Binance has a large number of users worldwide, we are looking forward to seeing more of them on BSC overtime.
8. What do you see as the main challenge for the future of DeFi?
Currently, we see many issues for DeFi applications, such as high gas fees, security vulnerabilities, poor UX, and slow speeds.
Injective seeks to rectify many of these problems moving forward. We are devoid of any gas fee; we integrate robust security parameters with an intuitive UX while also far surpassing the speeds of other DEXes. Beyond the innovations in decentralized derivatives, I would say that we are one of the first few to push for a hybrid between sidechain and layer-2 security. We believe that this is the best of both worlds as we can enjoy both the decentralization of a native chain while maximizing the security properties of layer-2.
9. Where do you see DeFi and BSC in five years?
We envision the DeFi market to grow exponentially for the next few years with various types of projects that meet user demands. DeFi is still quite a nascent industry, so as traction grows, the need for more established platforms will rise in conjunction. This is why BSC can become a market leader in this sector with various platforms leveraging BSC to introduce novel DeFi products.
Did this interview inspire you to start building on BSC? We’re looking for new DeFi projects to join the ever-growing BSC ecosystem. Binance is prepared to help you with the transition and support you both financially and technically. The ecosystem will help you grow, attract new users, and elevate your project to new heights.
If you’re interested in knowing more about the Binance incentives for BSC projects, please visit https://binancex.dev/index.html.
Alternatively, you can directly apply for the funding via this simple and straightforward form.
