Injective (INJ) up as Helix unveils pre-launch futures

• Injective (INJ) price rose to highs of $8.20 on Wednesday.
• The gains came as the layer-1 blockchain network’s DEX platform Helix unveiled its pre-launch futures product.
• Celestia (TIA) is the first pre-launch futures token to list on Helix.

Injective (INJ) is seeing a nice uptick in price today as the layer-1 blockchain adds to last week’s upside. While the altcoin‘s price is currently just 3.5% up in the past 24 hours, the gains were much more notable earlier in the day when INJ/USD touched highs of $8.20.

INJ traded to highs of $9.40 in April this year before the early 2023 momentum faded alongside the lull across the crypto market. In 2021, the price of INJ hit the all-time high of $24.89.

Helix unveils pre-launch futures

Injective’s price gains came as the Injective blockchain added to last week’s network milestones, which included integration with NFT marketplace Dagora and new Launchpad InjMarket. 

The latest milestone was achieved via Helix, a decentralized exchange (DEX) on Injective that introduced its pre-launch futures on Wednesday. The product allows customers to trade popular tokens before their official launch.

“Pre-Launch Futures are futures markets for tokens that have yet to launch. Effectively, this enables users to trade pre-launch markets that are typically reserved for early contributors, VCs or wealthy insiders,” the Helix team said in a blog post on Wednesday.

The first token on the Helix pre-launch futures market is Celestia (TIA), the native token of the modular data network developed by Celestia Labs. The platform’s recently launched airdrop that concluded today might have aided the overall sentiment in the Injective market.

TIA, which is expected to go live on a major crypto exchange in coming weeks, will be used for transaction fees. The token also has a fee burn mechanism akin to Ethereum’s EIP-1559.