Injective (INJ) Burn

Round 73 closed on 30 Nov 2022 with a winning bid of 5,000,000 INJ — the mainnet first-anniversary burn, INJ pooled by the community specifically to put into the auction, not that week's accumulated fees. Before and after it, the largest round ever was 58,600 (12 Jan 2022) and then 55,000 (18 Feb 2026). So any "X% of supply burned" ratio for INJ needs splitting: 5M was a one-time decision, 2,241,786 is the cumulative result of on-chain fees over nearly five years.

Burn by year (excluding the 5M): 2021 (3 rounds) 82,373; 2022 550,296; 2023 169,844; 2024 570,079; 2025 493,598; 2026 to 2 Sep (9 rounds) 375,598. 2024–2025 are the peak of real fee burn; 2023 the trough — the 12 Apr 2023 round took just 1,003 INJ, the lowest ever, and the year averaged 3,266 per round.

On the widely quoted figure: Injective and the press cite "6.78M INJ burned, ~7% of supply, worth $32M" (Oct 2025) and "6.87M" (Jan 2026). This ledger sums to 6,786,049 through 29 Oct 2025 and 6,866,188 through 24 Dec 2025 — matching both. That makes it the lifetime auction total, including the 5M of 2022, not a new buyback event; no round in the API has exceeded 55,000 since 2023.

The first three rounds in December 2021 burned 40,000 / 21,101 / 21,272 and January 2022 summed to 166,035 — the basket was rich from fees accumulated beforehand and INJ was still cheap (the winning bid is in INJ, so a low token price means more INJ burned). Through 2022 the basket shrank: May 75,929, July 21,034, August–October under 10,100 a month. 2023 flatlined at 5–22K a month.

2024 was the year fees returned: April 40,271, May 63,861, July 76,300, August 86,050 — the record month outside the anniversary round — and 570,079 for the year over 52 rounds (10,963 per round). 2025 eased: a steady 8,500–9,000 INJ per round through Aug–Oct 2025, 493,598 in total. Note INJ's price went from $52.62 (ATH, 14 Mar 2024) to under $10 in this period, so a flat INJ burn means the fee basket in USD terms fell sharply.

Round 222 (closed 29 Oct 2025, 8,703 INJ) was the last 7-day round; the on-chain auction_period parameter changed from 604,800 to 2,419,200 seconds and round 223 closed on 26 Nov 2025 with 36,940 INJ. At the same time Injective opened the Community BuyBack: instead of one winner taking the basket, selected users reserve a slot on Injective Hub, commit INJ, receive a pro-rata share of the basket (USDT and other tokens), and the committed INJ is burned. For the ledger, the round's winning amount is still the total INJ destroyed — the API records the same field.

The eleven 28-day rounds so far: 36,940 / 43,199 / 43,199 / 55,000 (18 Feb 2026, the peak) / 49,000 / 50,999 / 42,000 / 39,300 / 43,500 / 27,400 / 25,200 (2 Sep 2026). Total 455,736 INJ in 308 days = 1,480 a day, against 1,365 a day for the first ten months of 2025 under weekly rounds. Each round is 4–6× larger because it pools four weeks of fees, but per day it is only 8% more; and from the February 2026 peak the last seven rounds trend down, with the final two at 27,400 and 25,200 the lowest since the cycle change.

Injective issues new INJ as staking rewards through the Cosmos mint module: today's on-chain parameters are inflation_min 2.2%, inflation_max 4.4%, bonded goal 60%; with only 58.87M INJ bonded (48% of supply) — below the goal — inflation sits at the 4.4% ceiling, i.e. annual_provisions of 5,398,753 INJ a year, ~14,790 a day. Trailing-12-month burn is 507,380 → minting is 10.6× the burn; even counting the 5M anniversary, lifetime supply has still gone from 100M at genesis to 122.7M.

These bounds have been lowered repeatedly by vote: INJ 3.0 (IIP-392, Apr 2024) took them from 5–10% to 4–7% in quarterly steps over two years; the INJ Supply Squeeze (IIP-617, 20 Jan 2026) per Injective "doubles the rate of supply reduction". This ledger reads the current parameters from LCD and does not trace each change; the number to keep is that break-even needs ~14,790 INJ burned a day, i.e. ~414K per 28-day round — 7.5× the largest round ever outside 2022.

CoinGecko lists circulating = total = 100,000,000 INJ, exactly the 2020 genesis figure, unchanged since; true supply from the bank module today is 122,698,914. CoinGecko's displayed market cap is therefore about 18.5% below reality (100 / 122.7), whatever the price. This ledger's burn ratio uses on-chain supply: 7.24M / 122.7M = 5.9%; on 100M it would be 7.2% — the source of the "~7%" figure that circulates.

ATH $52.62 on 14 Mar 2024 — mid record-fee year; ATL $0.66 on 3 Nov 2020 (CoinGecko). At the peak price the 5M INJ of round 73 was worth $263M; at the burn-day price of 30 Nov 2022 (~$1.3), about $6.5M. There is no unlock schedule in the ledger — INJ's initial allocations have fully vested, the Unlocks column is empty.

The sole source for burns: Injective's official auction API (exchange/auction/v1/auctions), taking winningBidAmount and endTimestamp per round; the INJ is booked on the UTC day the round closes, not spread, so the daily chart is single bars 7 days apart (to Oct 2025) and then 28. The open round (round 234, due 30 Sep 2026) has no winning bid yet and is not recorded. Total burn = the 211 rounds summed; supply = bank supply via LCD; USD in the state card = quantity × price at the time the page was last updated.

The ledger does not convert the auction basket to USD (12–19 token types per round), so there is no revenue column; nor does it attribute INJ to specific apps' fees. The INJ the winner pays is the market's price for the basket — in 2024–2026 rounds the winning bid typically sits a few percent below basket value, which is the winner's margin, not a ledger error.