🔥 **Built for the Future: Injective's Journey Began Before the DeFi Wave** 🔥
While the world was still grasping the basics of blockchain, **Injective** was already laying the foundation for a decentralized financial future. Their journey is a testament to foresight, building the core infrastructure of DeFi before the term even became mainstream!
* **Year Zero: 2018.** Injective Labs was founded in 2018 by Eric Chen and Albert Chon. This was a time when decentralized exchanges (DEXs) were struggling with poor liquidity, high latency, and centralization issues. The vision was to create a truly decentralized exchange protocol.
* **Early Momentum (Pre-DeFi Summer):** In 2019, Injective raised its seed round, backed by early supporters like Pantera Capital and Binance Labs. In 2020, they joined the prestigious Binance Incubation Program and launched their first testnet.
* **The Critical Difference:** They weren't reacting to the DeFi boom of 2020/2021; they were preparing for it. Injective was busy building the underlying Layer-1 protocol and core financial primitives—a fully decentralized, MEV-resistant on-chain order book—a complex piece of infrastructure required for the sophisticated DeFi we see today.
This early commitment to building a purpose-built Layer-1 blockchain for finance is why Injective is now a leader, supporting an ecosystem of premier Web3 financial applications.
**It's not about being trendy; it's about being foundational.** Injective was a pioneer, solving the hard problems of decentralized finance from the start.
What groundbreaking projects do you think Injective will pioneer next? Let us know in the comments! 👇


