Injective's protocol community approved a significant overhaul of tokenomics on Monday, adopting a governance proposal with 99.89% support based on voting power.
Injective is a Layer 1 blockchain focused on decentralized finance applications, with INJ (INJ) serving because the native token for staking, governance and transaction fees.
The Supply Squeeze Proposal (IIP-617) reduces the issuance of native tokens and maintains the network's buyback and burn program, which uses protocol-generated revenue to permanently remove tokens from circulation.
The network said it removed about 6.85 million INJ from circulation through token burns. The proposal goals to speed up token removals by balancing reduced issuance with recurring buybacks.
According to an X post from Injective on Monday, the present governance changes will end in “INJ becoming one of the deflationary assets over time.”
Source: Injective
The governance vote follows a sustained decline in INJ’s market price amid a broader altcoin sell-off. Over the past 12 months, INJ has fallen nearly 80% and is greater than 90% below its all-time high reached in March 2024. According to CoinGecko data, the token fell about 8% on Monday.
The community response too
According to DefiLlama data, on the time of writing, Injective had a complete value (TVL) of $18.67 million across its entire DeFi ecosystem, a major decline from peaks of over $60 million in 2024.
Injective total value locked. Source: DefiLlama
Injective sees ETF sign-ups and recent validators
Despite the decline in INJ price and overall network value, Injective continued to draw institutional engagement in 2025, which included regulated investment products, validator participation, and recent financial market offerings.
In July, each Cboe and Canary Capital filed regulatory filings for an Injective exchange-traded fund (ETF). Both desired to list a fund that may hold and stake INJ to generate rewards via an “approved staking platform.”
Source: CoinGecko
Injective continues to expand its validator set. In February, Deutsche Telekom's IT services subsidiary, Deutsche Telekom MMS, joined the network as a validator.
Korea University recently became the primary academic institution to operate a validator and conduct on-chain research on the network, in line with an announcement on Wednesday.
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