All You Need To Know About INJS

INJS is an inscription marketplace on the Injective blockchain, which allows users to develop inscriptions and interact with these assets in the blockchain
Inscription

What is INJS?

Image Source: INJS Website
INJS is an inscription marketplace and the first on the Injective blockchain, allowing users to develop inscriptions and seamlessly interact with these assets. The platform runs on the INJRC-20 Protocol, and the indexer helps standardize INJRC-20 projects for proper integration.
Inscriptions are lightweight and efficient assets. INJS is the marketplace where users mint, buy, and transfer these inscriptions, thereby contributing to the overall health and diversity of the Injective and inscriptive asset landscape.
Aside from being a source of innovation and motivation, it also ensures inscriptions contribute positively to the development of the crypto space, which led to it launching its first inscription, $INJS.
The INJS token, the first inscription token created on the Injective blockchain, was fully minted within 24 hours of its launch on the 3rd of January, 2024.
The proof-of-work mechanism was implemented on the Injective blockchain to mint INJS tokens. Users were required to connect their wallets to generate a random nonce, the block hash, and the relevant address. The user then opens a mint operation with a base64 encoding and a mint limit of 5k tokens.

History of the INJS Marketplace Project

The concept of inscriptions started on the Bitcoin blockchain through the Ordinals feature. By the end of 2023, inscriptions spread beyond Bitcoin to the Injective blockchain.
The injective blockchain is a fast, interoperable project optimized for building finance applications based on the blockchain. To achieve this, it provides developers with powerful plug-and-play modules for creating innovative dApps.
One such innovative project on the Injective blockchain is the INJS inscription marketplace launched in 2023, alongside the introduction of the INJRC-20 protocol. The project is the first of its kind on the Injective blockchain, and it shared plans to launch its first inscription, $INJS, which is currently undergoing some difficulties.
On the 21st of December 2023, the INJS project announced it would be halting its launch of the $INJS asset because of the high number of bots involved. To ensure the launch was fair for members of its community, the INJS development team promised to learn more and create an adaptive strategy that returns the token launch to its members, not bots. Notably, the marketplace and its underlying technology are still undergoing development.

How Does The INJS Marketplace Work? INJRC-20 Protocol and Indexer

INJRC-20 Protocol

The INJRC-20 protocol is an experimental token standard for deploying, minting, and transferring inscription tokens on the Injective blockchain. Like the Ordinals on Bitcoin, INJRC-20 is used to create inscriptions, which are the content of ordinal NFTs on Injective.
The protocol was created to guide the community and the development of the ecosystem to avoid consensus divergence, empower the ecosystem, and diversify the assets on the Injective blockchain.
The INJRC-20 protocol helps systems identify and process minting, deploying, and transferring events for INJRC-20 tokens. The function requires the developer to specify the INJS ticker alongside the max token supply and mint limitations associated with that INJRC-20 token.
The INJRC-20 protocol allows users to engage through a transfer transaction by simply transferring assets with specific instructions embedded within the “memo” field of the transaction. These instructions are usually encoded using the base64 format to avoid formatting errors.
This method reduces the transaction costs, allowing users to interact directly with INJRC-20 tokens.

Indexer

Indexers are programs that extract and organize data from a blockchain or database. The indexer on INJS allows users to track the state of the INJS tokens, gleaning such information as the total supply, the balance of each wallet, the minting and transferring operations, and the rules for each ticker.
Specific rules guide the INJRC-20 protocol for using the indexer on INJS. These rules include such things as the inscription must be a valid JSON, not JSON5. The JSON must include a max and amt field when conducting an event, such as minting or deploying an inscription token. The lim field is optional. Also, all the mandatory field names must be in lowercase, and all the fields must be strings. No numbers are accepted.
These rules define the format, logic, validation, and processing of operations related to INJRC-20 tokens on the Injective blockchain.

Features of The INJS Ecosystem: INJS Marketplace and INJS Inscription Explorer

INJS Marketplace

The INJS marketplace is a platform built on the Injective blockchain with the underlying INJRC-20 protocol for the minting, buying, selling, and transferring inscriptions.
Users can browse through various types of inscriptions and create their own by minting INJS tokens. The marketplace is the first on the Injective blockchain to enable users to inscribe assets using a transfer operation. This involves sending INJ to the marketplace address, which the indexer would confirm before the “Buy” order is executed, and the right amount of INJRC-20 tokens is sent to the buying address.
Inscriptions can be listed or delisted on the marketplace by the user who owns the inscription asset. For listing events, the owners are required to stipulate the price value of the inscriptions listed.

INJS Inscription Explorer

The INJS inscription explorer is built with the underlying indexer that allows users to search for data on the INJS inscriptions, such as the ordinal number, the content, the owner, the history, and the metadata.
This information is presented to the user in a visual, user-friendly manner to improve the user’s experience working with INJS inscriptions.

What is the INJS Token?

The INJS inscription token is based on the INJRC-20 standard, which uses a “special receiver” address or marketplace address to inscribe tokens. The INJS inscription token is an experimental token designed to encourage the creation and exchange of inscriptions on the Injective network.
The token can be minted, deployed, and transferred. It has a maximum supply of two billion tokens and a limit per mint of 1,000 tokens. To mint and hold $INJS, the user must set up an injective wallet and pay the associated fees to mint when it becomes available.
Initially, the launch of the Injective inscription token was met with some challenges. Multiple users utilized crypto bots to manipulate the token acquisition process. At first, the team made plans to suspend the launch due to the setbacks.
However, at about 4:00 PM GMT on the 3rd of January, 2024, the protocol announced the success of the inscription token’s launch. There were 11,062 holders at the time, and the team promised to shed more light on more exciting features related to the token’s deployment and functionalities in the days ahead.

Is the INJS Token a Good Investment?

The INJS inscription token is not traded on any major exchange, so its trading volume and price are unavailable. The project is designed to assist users in creating and managing their inscriptions on the INJS marketplace.
With the Ordinals and inscription space being new and the INJS marketplace being the first of its kind on the Injective blockchain, the project and token are well placed to expand and dominate the space, leading to a higher price valuation for the INJS token.

Advantages

The INJS inscription marketplace uses the INJRC-20 protocol that streamlines the interaction between the user and minting, deploying, or transferring inscription tokens.
The INJRC-20 protocol’s design mechanism of utilizing the “memo” field allows users to interact directly with inscriptions, which reduces the complexity and cost of transacting compared to dedicated smart contracts.
The project leverages “lightweight” inscriptions, which are faster and cheaper to process. The use of inscriptions with unique utility and features allows for creativity, potentially leading to more innovations down the line. The inscriptions also diversify the assets available on the Injective blockchain, which would attract more users and investors to the space.

Disadvantages

The INJS marketplace, built on the INJRC-20’s “memo” field interaction method, might be susceptible to manipulation during the early stages. This is due to the lack of appropriate monitoring and indexing needed to curb malicious activities.
The control over these indexing services can also lead to centralization. The security measures in place are yet to be optimally tested, and while the security on the Injective blockchain is robust, the early stages of the project require consistent monitoring.
This early-stage problem also limits the interoperability of the project and brings to question how scalable the project can be. Over time, these are disadvantages that the Injective community is working to resolve.

Challenges

The foremost challenge is the launch of the INJS token. While the project has yet to get a reliable means of distributing the tokens, working with inscriptions is still challenging.
This leads to lower awareness and participation as users and developers still need to familiarize themselves with the technology. The inscription design and the early stages of the project would present technical and security challenges.
Finally, with the amount of inscription standards being developed, there would be difficulties in attempting to achieve interoperability.

Competitive Product Analysis

The INJS inscription marketplace is the first of its kind on the Injective blockchain, the same way Ordinals is a pioneering force on Bitcoin. While Ordinals is more established, the INJS project is built with the INJRC-20 standard on Injective that can attract DeFi users.
Unlike the Ordinals project, the INJS marketplace is dedicated to minting and trading inscriptions, which targets users interested in trading this innovation.

How Can You Own INJS?

To own INJS tokens and become a part of the INJS inscription ecosystem, users can follow a simple process:

Setup a Wallet

One way to own INJS tokens is to purchase them upon launch through an exchange. For this, the user must create a Gate.io account, complete the KYC process, and add funds to the account to buy the token.

Utilize the INJS Tokens

Once users have acquired INJS tokens, they can explore the wide range of functionalities currently available in the INJS inscription Marketplace, such as minting, buying, or deploying inscriptions.

Conclusion

The INJS marketplace is a promising platform and the first marketplace on the Injective blockchain dedicated to inscription tokens. The marketplace runs on the INJRC-20 protocol that helps create lightweight assets for faster and cheaper transactions.
While the market and the INJS token contribute to the diversification of assets in the Injective ecosystem, the platform’s early stage of development brings some challenges, like scalability concerns, limited user awareness, technical hurdles, manipulation, and security risks.
As the only inscription marketplace, the INJS platform is well-positioned to dominate the Injective inscription space.