Among the many chains in the Cosmos ecosystem, Injective has inherent "uniqueness" since its inception—it does not focus on public chain infrastructure or generalized DApps like most Cosmos chains; instead, it precisely targets the financial sector, becoming the "financial core hub" of the entire Cosmos ecosystem. Data from 2025 shows that Injective's financial trading volume accounts for 68% of the total financial trading volume in the Cosmos ecosystem, with RWA and Pre-IPO sectors standing out uniquely. It deeply leverages the underlying advantages of Cosmos' IBC cross-chain ecosystem, consensus mechanism, etc., while also breaking through the ecological limitations of Cosmos through multi-VM compatibility and financial-specific modules, carving out a differentiated path of "leveraging without dependency."
The initiation of Injective is inseparable from the foundational empowerment of the Cosmos ecosystem. First is the cross-chain foundation of the IBC protocol; Cosmos's IBC protocol is one of the industry's most mature cross-chain communication standards, enabling seamless flow of native assets between different Cosmos chains. From its inception, Injective has connected to the IBC ecosystem, early on establishing asset channels with core chains like Cosmos Hub and Osmosis, allowing assets such as ATOM and OSMO to directly enter Injective's financial market, accumulating its first batch of cross-chain liquidity. From 2020 to 2023, over 40% of Injective's initial users and liquidity came from the Cosmos ecosystem, with the IBC protocol becoming its 'first key' to unlock the cross-chain financial market.
Secondly, the stability support of the consensus mechanism; Injective is built on the Cosmos SDK + Tendermint consensus, a combination that retains the decentralization and security of PoS consensus while achieving sub-second block confirmation speeds. The modular development framework of the Cosmos SDK also allows Injective to quickly complete underlying iterations without having to undergo the lengthy hard fork process that a monolithic chain would require. Since the mainnet launch in 2020, Injective has maintained a zero downtime record, and this stability is a core necessity for a financial public chain, which is supported by the foundational guarantee of the Cosmos consensus mechanism.
Moreover, the collaborative ecological resources of the Cosmos ecosystem have also provided support for the early development of Injective. The cross-chain governance system of the Cosmos ecosystem allows Injective to participate in the resource allocation and rule-making of the entire ecosystem; while the institutional resources of the Cosmos ecosystem, such as early investments from the Interchain Foundation and the institutional cooperation network within the ecosystem, have provided funding and resource support for Injective's layout in the financial sector. It can be said that the Cosmos ecosystem is Injective's 'cradle of growth', laying a solid foundation for cross-chain and stable operations.
However, Injective has not stopped at 'leveraging Cosmos' but has continuously innovated to break through the traditional limitations of the Cosmos ecosystem. The most critical breakthrough is the compatibility of multiple VMs, breaking the 'virtual machine barrier' of Cosmos. Early Cosmos ecosystem chains were mostly developed based on Cosmos SDK, primarily using the WASM virtual machine, which created significant technical barriers with ecosystems like Ethereum EVM and Solana VM, preventing a large number of developers and assets from Ethereum and Solana from entering the Cosmos ecosystem. In 2025, Injective launched its native EVM mainnet and subsequently completed compatibility with Solana VM, becoming the first public chain in the Cosmos ecosystem to achieve multi-virtual machine compatibility with EVM, WASM, and Solana VM. This breakthrough directly bridged the ecological barriers between Cosmos and Ethereum, Solana, allowing Ethereum's USDC and Solana's native assets to be directly cross-chain to Injective, while attracting a large number of financial developers from Ethereum and Solana ecosystems. In Q3 2025, among the new developers on Injective, 42% came from the Ethereum ecosystem and 18% from the Solana ecosystem, completely breaking the developer circle restrictions of the Cosmos ecosystem.
Secondly, the financial-specific modules break through the scenario limitations of Cosmos. Early chains in the Cosmos ecosystem focused on basic DeFi scenarios such as cross-chain DEX and general lending, lacking support for complex financial scenarios like RWA and Pre-IPO. Injective has targeted the development of a series of financial-specific modules, such as RWA asset mapping modules, Pre-IPO contract engines, and commodity derivatives modules, becoming the only public chain in the Cosmos ecosystem capable of covering all categories of financial scenarios. In Q3 2025, Injective's RWA trading volume surpassed $3.5 billion, and the trading volume of Pre-IPO contracts reached $800 million. These scenarios not only filled the financial gaps in the Cosmos ecosystem but also attracted a large number of traditional financial users into the Cosmos ecosystem—data shows that by 2025, over 150,000 traditional financial users entered the Cosmos ecosystem through Injective, accounting for 72% of the newly added traditional users in the Cosmos ecosystem.
Furthermore, compliance and traditional finance have broken through the ecological boundaries of Cosmos. The early development of the Cosmos ecosystem was primarily based on crypto-native users, with limited connections to traditional finance. Injective has proactively built a compliance platform, collaborating with traditional financial institutions such as Coinbase Custody and Ondo Finance, creating a closed loop for off-chain asset custody and compliance data integration, achieving a link between traditional financial assets and the Cosmos ecosystem. For example, its launched perpetual contracts for U.S. Treasury bonds have connected real U.S. Treasury bond assets through Ondo Finance, allowing Cosmos ecosystem users to participate in on-chain trading of traditional fixed-income assets for the first time. This initiative not only expands Injective's own ecological boundaries but also opens the gateway to traditional finance for the entire Cosmos ecosystem.
Today, Injective has already grown from being 'one member' of the Cosmos ecosystem to 'the firstborn of finance'—it retains the cross-chain genes of the Cosmos ecosystem while becoming the core hub linking external financial markets through technological and scenario innovations. For the Cosmos ecosystem, Injective's success proves the feasibility of 'deep cultivation in vertical tracks', providing a differentiated development model for other Cosmos chains; for Injective itself, leveraging Cosmos while breaking through limitations has allowed it to possess both the liquidity foundation of the cross-chain ecosystem and the service capabilities for complex financial scenarios, which is the core reason it stands out in the financial public chain sector.
