Injective (INJ) — Could it be “the so-called ‘$SOL killer’”?
Hey Everyone!
Happy New Year!!
Today, I’m going to cover a project that I think has potential and one that I think will increase in value significantly in the next bull run. Even though it’s up 28x year to date, I’m going to take you through why I think its value will increase significantly.
It might feel like a clickbait title but this isn’t my perspective. A simple Google of “Solana killer Injective” will reveal that there’s a lot of hype around Injective. In some cases, this could just be a shill although, moving a token that has a $3.1bn market cap would be difficult for most YouTube/Bloggers and their communities so what’s my perspective on this?
I’m going to dig in to the project, review some of the numbers, tackle the potential vs Solana angle and give some insight to my approach at the end of this article.
So, let’s start by understanding what Injective is.
Injective markets their blockchain as “the fastest layer 1 blockchain shaping the future of finance” and it’s fair to say their blockchain is FAST and CHEAP to use. The block time is sub 1 second at 0.8 seconds and the average transaction cost is < $0.01.
Now you might be thinking, yeah yeah, it’s all well and good doing some research Mark and telling us what Injective claim, but the reality vs the theory could be totally different! Well, I’ve been using the Injective Mainnet over the last couple of weeks and I can confirm that it’s by far the fastest and cheapest Mainnet I’ve used.
I’m currently staking INJ at 15% APR and I claim the rewards to compound them every day. The transactions are INSTANT and the fees = 0.0002304 INJ/$0.008711424.
As I mentioned above, Injective are focusing their blockchain in the Finance/DeFi space which is a different approach to most other Layer 1s. It isn’t trying to be a Layer 1 of all things. Taking the speed & cost of transactions into account, this could be the number 1 reason for Finance/DeFi projects to look at Injective as the ecosystem they want to build in.
But, there are other reasons beyond the speed and cost of transactions that developers and projects would want to build on the Injective blockchain. With the teams focus on Finance & DeFi, Injective provides an out of the box decentralised order book which allows developers to leverage liquidity that already exists in the ecosystem. The Injective blockchain is also highly interoperable which allows seamless cross chain transactions across Ethereum, CosmosHub, Solana, Avalanche and lots, lots more.
“So, that’s all great Mark but why does that matter?”
Well, let’s take that information and put this into perspective. Given the benefits of near non-existent fees and instant transactions the Injective ecosystem will grow organically and existing projects will consider migrating their projects to Injective. That brings with it, more people into the ecosystem. They get the benefits of cheap fees and instant transactions BUT they need INJ to interact within the ecosystem just like Ethereum and Solana. This will lead to more demand for INJ and therefore increasing the price. The illustration below shows that the number of INJ token holders is starting to increase at a fast rate. Leading up to the Christmas/New Year break, the number of active users per day were increasing significantly.
We’ve covered a high level view of fundamentals of the project, so let’s take a look at numbers.
Injective (INJ)
- Current Price: $37.24
- Market Cap: $3.1bn
- Fully Diluted Valuation: $3.7bn
- All Time High — $44.86 on December 24th 2023
- Price at 1st Jan 2023 — $1.275
- YTD Increase: 28x
Injective is already a big project in the Crypto space. It’s ranked #31 on CoinGecko and #30 on CoinMarketCap.
When it first launched, it was incubated by Binance Labs (2018), it raised its seed round which was led by Pantera Capital (2020), it was released on Binance Launchpad (2020), it raised additional funding from Pantera & Mark Cuban (2021), it released it’s Mainnet (Q4 2021), it raised new institutional funding from Jump and Brevan Howard (Q3 2022).
These are all big names and it’s clear that there’s lots of interest in this project from huge backers and institutions.
Now, for a bit of fun, let’s compare this with Solana. For this section, please take it with a pinch of salt. It’s not financial advice, I’ll share how I’m getting involved with Injective after the comparison.
Solana (SOL)
Price: $104.76
Market Cap: $45.2bn
Fully Diluted Valuation: $60bn
All Time High: $259.96 on November 6th 2021.
With these numbers, I took to https://marketcapof.com/ and to my surprise, at number 3 in the top 10 compares, I see Injective compared against Solana (screenshot below)….
I compared Injective against Solana and if Injective grows as big as Solana is now, INJ would be worth $539.08 each which is a 14x from the current price. But what if we compare INJ to All Time High of Solana…..
If Injective grew to the same size that Solana was at it’s previous All Time High, INJ would be worth $923.93 each which is a 24.59x from current price.
So, do I think it can happen and am I getting involved?
Let’s answer the first question, do I think that INJ can grow to the same size as SOL? It could do but I think it’s unlikely anytime soon and whilst I think it will grow significantly, I don’t see it toppling Solana in the next bull run.
Obviously this is just an opinion but it doesn’t mean I’m not getting involved…… I bought a bag of INJ earlier this year which I’m already up around 8x, I held it in on a centralised exchange until recently where I transferred it into the Injective ecosystem to stake. As well as a 15% APR, I’m also getting involved in airdrops in the Injective ecosystem which I’ll be updating weekly in Discord: https://discord.gg/W7G2FCFBHT
I’ve also been quite aggressive over the last couple of weeks in building more INJ through DCA bots which I’m periodically transferring out to the Injective ecosystem to stake.
Overall, I’m very bullish on Injective. I think it will grow significantly over the next few years and it’s a project that I’m taking a long term approach to. I will be following up with more Injective content across Medium, Discord & on YouTube including Airdrop opportunities, Projects in the Injective Ecosystem and more. Links can be found in the LinkTree below!
You can buy Injective on most CEXs — Binance, MEXC, KuCoin, Coinbase, Bybit, WooX, OKx, Bitget, Crypto.com, Kraken, Gemini as well as DEXs like Uniswap, Sushiswap, Pancakeswap.
Affiliate Links
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Also, if you want to buy me a coffee or a beer :) :
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ETH, BNB, AVAX, SOL , FTM based tokens — 0x3B7B843D8125Fe7eBA541e1D751a4A73f0cFad4c
DISCLAIMER
This is not financial advice, I’m not a financial advisor or accountant or tax professional.
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