Initia: The Interwoven Economy
This week, we’re introducing a new format where we provide an overview of promising projects—starting with Initia.
What is Initia?
Team and backers
Chain architecture
What makes Initia unique?
Tokenomics & airdrops
Read on!
1. What is Initia?
Initia is a network of interwoven rollups—an L1 blockchain and a system of interconnected optimistic rollups.
It supports EVM, MoveVM, and CosmWasm. Smart contracts on Initia’s L1 are written in MoveVM.
Initia solves liquidity and user experience fragmentation by:
Providing Minitias (rollups on Initia) with tooling and infrastructure out of the box, so teams can focus on building their apps.
Enshrined liquidity – Think of Initia L1 as the liquidity hub and coordinator for all Minitias.
Vested Interest Program (VIP) – An incentive program that rewards active users, app builders, and liquidity providers.
2. Team and Backers
Team
Initia was founded by Zon & Stan Liu. Zon handles external relations and business development, while Stan is the CEO of Initia.
The core team has years of experience building across Cosmos, Terra, and Ethereum ecosystems.
Backer
Total funding received: $25M
$1M pre-seed investment from Binance Labs
$7.5M seed round in February 2024, led by Delphi Ventures and Hack VC
$14M Series A at 350M valuation in September 2024, led by Theory Ventures, with Delphi Ventures and Hack VC doubling down
$2.5M Community Round on echo.xyz at 250M valuation - a community-led raise with over 812 participants
3. Chain Architecture
Initia is a network of interwoven rollups, consisting of:
Initia L1 – the orchestration layer
Minitias – an interconnected system of optimistic rollups with 0.5ms block time and 10,000 TPS
Both Initia L1 and Minitias are Cosmos SDK-based chains with IBC enabled and use Celestia for data availability (DA).
For more information, read their docs here.
4. What Makes Initia Unique?
Multiple VM Support
Initia has built a module that enables seamless transfers between different token standards—ERC-20, CW20, and MoveVM’s token standard—via IBC.
⇒ This means Minitias can use EVM, MoveVM, or CosmWasm — any virtual machine they want.
Enshrined Liquidity
In addition to INIT, whitelisted INIT-X LP tokens from the Initia DEX can be staked to help secure the network, earn staking rewards, and gain voting power.
Users can lock up their LP tokens for a longer period in exchange for increased voting power — similar to superfluid staking on Osmosis or proof-of-liquidity on Berachain.
By participating in Initia’s Enshrined Liquidity, users can:
Earn swap fees
Earn staking yield on the INIT portion of the LP
Gain voting power to participate in VIP — or sell that power to the highest bidder
⇒ This effectively turns Initia L1 into a liquidity hub for inter-Minitia routing and swaps.
Fast Withdrawals from Rollups with MinitSwap
Optimistic rollups typically take 7 days to withdraw tokens from the rollup back to the L1.
With Initia, withdrawals from a Minitia to Initia L1—or even to another Minitia—are instant, thanks to IBC and Skip Go for optimized routing.
However, they will have a different form of a token: IBC.OP.INIT, OP.INIT, and INIT. How do they solve the UX problem?
MinitSwap
Initia uses a hub-and-spoke model, where a single INIT pool is paired with various IBC.op.INIT from multiple Minitias.
To support this, Initia has built a Peg Keeper Module that automatically rebalances the pool between IBC.op.INIT, op.INIT & INIT in the background. It also handles the 7-day withdrawal period itself rather than putting the burden of the delay on the users.
Read the details here.
Vested Interest Program (VIP) Program
The Vested Interest Program (VIP) is designed to align all ecosystem participants — from users and builders to operators. To achieve this, Initia distributes INIT rewards to incentivize alignment across the network.
Rewards Distribution:
esINIT (escrowed INIT) is distributed to Minitia operators and network users
Rewards are vested over 26 bi-weekly epochs
To unlock rewards, users must maintain on-chain activity or zap into a staking position (flywheel effect)
For a detailed breakdown, read this article here.
5. Ecosystem
Already have +14 Minitias launching on Initia. Some notable apps:
DeFi:
Blackwing – An intent-based L2 that enables leveraged trading on any asset across any chain (think: long/short on meme coins and more).
MilkyWay – Liquid staking and restaking. Deployed initially on Osmosis, migrating to Initia at mainnet. Also the first Celestia restaking protocol to go live.
Drop – Liquid staking with INIT/USDC LPs. Coming soon.
Echelon Market – A money market protocol, already live on Sui & Aptos.
Contro – Gradual limit order book designed for prediction markets, similar to Polymarket.
Embr Labs – A memecoin launchpad.
Rave – Altcoin perpetuals trading.
Inertia_fi – Lending protocol & restaking protocol.
CabalVIP – Vote power management for Initia’s VIP program, helping LPs maximize yield.
NFT:
Intergaze – Stargaze NFT marketplace deploying on Initia. A purpose-built chain with zero gas, optimized for creators and NFTs.
Zaar: NFT Marketplace.
Games:
Kamigotchi – A Tamagotchi-style, fully on-chain game.
Civitia – Monopoly-inspired, fully on-chain strategy game.
Infinity Ground – Tools to help anyone create interactive entertainment 10x faster with AI + Web3.
Battle for blockchain – On-chain strategy game.
AI:
Rena Labs: – Building a trustless coordination Minitia using Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) machine learning. Raised 3.3m pre-seed round in Jan 2025.
INIT AI – AI image generation app and marketplace.
Other apps:
Lunch – Optimized auto-farming of yields and airdrops through personalized, autonomous Lunch AI agents.
Minity – An enhanced portfolio tracker tailored for interwoven rollups in the Initia ecosystem.
6. Tokenomics & Airdrops
$INIT Token distribution
25% of the total supply is allocated to the Vested Interest Program (VIP) — a long-term incentive mechanism designed to reward authentic and sustainable activity within the Interwoven Economy programmatically.
No unlocked staking rewards for insiders — a strong signal toward fair token distribution.
~30% discounted community round (echo round).
Only 15% of the supply is allocated to investors.
$INIT Airdrop
50,000,000 INIT tokens — 5% of the total network supply will be airdrops. Check your eligibility for Initia airdrop here.
For Interwoven stack partners, top 2000 power users among these chains and protocols are eligible for Initia airdrop.
If you are curious about the eligibility criteria for Initia airdrop, read the details here and the reasoning behind it by Initia’s CEO here.
7. Conclusion
Initia focuses on apps and provides all the necessary toolings and infra to launch. So far, Initia has onboard +14 apps to launch on their chain even before the mainnet launch.
With the VIP program, Initia lays the foundation for a powerful flywheel effect by aligning all ecosystem participants — users, apps, and validators — around their incentives program.