Come from the masses and go to the masses.

Written by: Eric, Foresight News

On September 22, Injective launched the Stockdrop event. For users participating in the monthly community buyback, in addition to permanently burning the committed INJ, exchanging for a share of ecological revenue sharing, there is also a chance to receive a tokenized Nvidia or AMC tokenized stock, officially starting on September 23.

Burning your own tokens, taking the platform's revenue, and possibly receiving a piece of US stock for free. This kind of good fortune deserves a closer look in any project. But if you know about Injective's efforts in buyback mechanisms over the past few years, you'll find that sending stocks is just the latest layer of packaging; what's truly interesting is the continuously evolving burning design underneath.

From Professional Auctions to Benefiting the Community

At the end of 2021, Injective launched weekly burns based on an auction mechanism.

The logic is as follows. On-chain exchange applications automatically inject 60% of transaction fees into a pool, filled with real asset fees like ETH, WBTC, and USDT. Every week, this basket of assets goes up for public auction, where everyone can only bid with INJ. The highest bidder takes the entire basket of assets, and the INJ they paid is burned on the spot, permanently removed from circulation.

This is completely different from the buyback of most projects. The common approach is for the project party to announce how much profit was used to buy back tokens in the secondary market, then send them to a black hole address. The entire process is a corporate action, with how much is burned relying solely on an announcement. It is even unclear whether the tokens repurchased come from investors, market makers, the team, or really the secondary market.

Injective, on the other hand, turned burning into a market event. The amount of INJ burned is not decided by the project party but is jointly determined by the thickness of the ecological revenue of the period and the intensity of bidding. What's more clever is that it comes with participation incentives, as bids can be slightly lower than the market value of the basket. In the earliest official examples, a basket valued at $100 was won for a bid of $95, with the winner netting $5, and the protocol burning $95 worth of INJ, both sides getting what they need.

This mechanism that publicized buyback burning was later personally overturned by Injective.

Because auctions are a winner-takes-all game. Those who can monitor the pool's real-time bids and accurately calculate arbitrage opportunities are essentially bots and professional arbitrageurs. Ordinary holders lack the tools and speed, so over the years, while the weekly burn numbers have risen, the community has remained mere spectators. The officials later stated quite directly on social media that the motivation for the upgrade was to replace the outdated winner-takes-all model, making it simpler, more open, and more community-centric.

Thus, in October 2024, a new direction was set at the governance level. On October 23, 2025, the first community buyback officially launched, burning 6.78 million INJ all at once after a week, accounting for about 7% of the total supply at that time, worth approximately $32.28 million. The rules of the new mechanism are much simpler. A fixed number of seats is opened each issue, with whitelist users (those who actively participate in ecological projects) served on a first-come-first-served basis, where everyone commits to providing a certain amount of INJ within a specified upper and lower limit. At the end of the period, all committed INJ is burned, and the basket composed of that month's ecological revenue is distributed to each participant in proportion to their shares.

Since the basket's value is known before the launch, and the number of seats multiplied by the upper limit of individual commitments is set below the basket value, the total commitments from all participants cannot mathematically exceed the basket, regardless of how popular participation is. Participants receive a locked-in positive price difference. Over the past four rounds, the average yield per round is about 23.9%, with none falling below 20%. Essentially, Injective is executing a premium buyback, using $10,000 in revenue to burn back 9,000 INJ, and the extra price difference goes to pay for the community's burning service fee. Burning has truly become a community dividend ceremony where everyone shares the rewards.

In terms of price, the current price of INJ is about $8, which is not an exaggerated increase compared to the low point of about $2.65 at the beginning of the year, but it is one of the earliest tokens to initiate an upward trend. Since the Injective ecosystem is currently far less active than Hyperliquid or even NEAR, the increase in token price is limited, but this does not detract from the cleverness of this mechanism design.

Giving Money and Stocks

Once you understand this mechanism, it becomes clear about Stockdrop. It's an additional layer of rewards on top of the regular buyback, launching with the special event on September 23. There are two key rules. First, the revenue from the buyback portion is still proportional to your commitment amount. Second, the stock rewards are completely independent of the commitment amount, with each address eligible for at most one tokenized stock; officials phrase it as having the opportunity to receive one, with specific allocation subject to what's shown on the page. This design is clearly aimed at preventing large holders from monopolizing it, making small participants and large holders completely equal in terms of stock rewards.

The claiming process is also not complicated. After the buyback ends, return to the Injective Hub, click on the Stockdrop banner at the top of the page, connect the same wallet you used to participate, and after the system verifies your participation record, it will display the stock token allocated to you and its reception address on the Robinhood Chain. Then click to claim, share the social card generated by the officials on X, link back to the post, and complete the claim with a signature. The officials emphasize that this step incurs no fees and does not involve any token authorizations, strictly a signature verification. This approach embedding tweeting into the claiming process makes the intent of spreading the message quite apparent.

As for choosing to give tokenized stocks, it was not a spur-of-the-moment decision.

Injective's tokenized stock product coincidentally also launched on September 23, and the Meridian mainnet upgrade one day later will bring regulatory token standards and a unified RWA perpetual market. The true role of Stockdrop is the cold start of new business, directly converting the most loyal burning participants into the first batch of holders and propagators of tokenized stocks.

Injective's buyback mechanism is one of the few in the industry that directly gives the benefits of buyback burning to token holders, but the current activity level of its ecosystem is still a hard flaw. After establishing infrastructure in the domain of tokenized stocks, subsequent performance is worth looking forward to.