Introducing Onchain Options on Injective

Today, Injective officially unveils Injective Options, a new financial primitive for developers, institutions, and users. It brings calls and puts on real-world indices and commodities onchain, and every option is fully backed in native Injective USDC from the moment it's written. 

The first cohort of six markets is live on testnet, with access rolling out to whitelisted participants first.

When we launched the Super Intelligence Compute Index, we promised a brand new onchain finance primitive within days. It took one day. Injective Options is that primitive. SICI leads the first cohort, alongside indices for US top 500 companies, US top 100 Tech companies, gold, silver, and WTI crude oil.

A perpetual moves one for one with the market, in both directions, for as long as you hold it. An option lets you choose your exposure, pay for it upfront, and know your worst case before you sign. Traders and businesses use options to shape risk, and Injective now puts that tool onchain for markets like SI compute.

What Injective Options Is

An option is a contract on where a price will finish at a set date. A call pays out if the index settles above its strike. A put pays out if it settles below. The buyer pays a premium upfront, and that premium is the most they can lose.

On Injective, both sides are capped. A call has a strike and a cap, so it pays more as the index rises from the strike to the cap, then stops. A put has a strike and a floor, so it pays more as the index falls toward the floor. Traditional desks call these call spreads and put spreads. On Injective, each one is a single contract with a single premium.

Capping the payout gives every option a fixed maximum, so the seller can lock that exact amount on day one. That's how every option on Injective stays fully backed.

Every Option Is Fully Backed

Whoever writes an option locks its maximum payout upfront in native Injective USDC, which is becoming the canonical USDC standard across more than 20 blockchains. That collateral stays onchain until expiry, so the money a buyer could win is set aside before the trade fills. Nothing is borrowed, which means there's no margin to top up and nobody gets liquidated when the index jumps.

An institutional liquidity provider quotes both sides of every strike, in calls and puts. That gives traders a price to buy or sell at from the first day of launch.

Before you sign the confirming transaction, the app shows your premium, maximum profit, maximum loss, and breakeven next to a payoff chart. Signing the transaction fills the order.

The First Cohort of Markets

The cohort pairs the newest asset class on Injective with markets options traders already know. Gold, silver, and oil cover global commodities, the classic macro hedges. US500 and US Tech cover equity risk. SICI gives options traders something new, a defined-risk way to take a view on the cost of AI compute. These six markets are a fraction of what the infrastructure underneath them makes possible.

How a SICI Option Works

SICI tracks the rental price of the GPUs powering AI, and two groups sit on opposite sides of it. AI developers pay more when compute gets scarce. GPU providers earn less when rental prices fall. Options let each side protect itself without taking on open-ended risk.

Say SICI sits at $113 and you expect compute prices to climb. You buy 100 capped calls with a $113 strike and a $123 cap. Each contract covers 0.01 times the index, and the premium is $0.03 per contract, so you pay $3 in total.

If SICI settles at $119 at expiry, each contract pays $0.06. You receive $6 and finish $3 ahead. At $125, the cap holds your payout at $10, the most this position can return. At or below $113, the calls expire worthless and you've lost the $3 premium. Your breakeven is $116.

A GPU provider worried about falling rental revenue takes the other view. A capped put with a $113 strike and a $103 floor pays as SICI drops. With the same 100 contracts and the same premium, a settlement at $105 pays $8 on a $3 outlay.

Built for Developers, Institutions, and Users

Injective Options is composable infrastructure for an entire ecosystem of options protocols. Each protocol can run its own markets and connect with other financial primitives across onchain finance.

Developers can use it to build white-label options exchanges, launch their own derivatives protocols, or ship new financial products without building the underlying infrastructure from scratch.

Institutions can design custom derivatives and hedging products around the exposure they need to manage. A firm renting GPUs at scale, for example, could hedge its compute costs against SICI.

Users get new markets and can trade or write options directly onchain, with writing starting on a whitelist.

Every app built on this infrastructure can earn revenue for the team behind it. As more of them launch, they bring more trading activity, liquidity, and fees to Injective and its broader ecosystem.

Options Workflow Example

At launch, writing is open to whitelisted participants. A writer picks a market, a strike, and an expiry, locks the maximum payout in USDC, and collects the premium when a buyer takes the trade.

Take the SICI calls above from the writer's side. The writer locks $10 and receives the $3 premium. If SICI settles below 113, they keep the premium and get the full $10 back. If it settles at 119, $6 goes to the buyer and $4 returns to the writer, who finishes $3 down after the premium. Their worst case is a $7 loss, and they know it before they sign.

Writers get paid for taking the other side of a view. If you expect an index to hold inside a range, you can sell options outside it and keep the premium if it holds.

How Settlement Works

Each option settles once, at expiry, against its index. Injective Options are European style and cash settled in USDC. However, options can be sold before expiry if both sides wish to clear their risk early.

At expiry, settlement is automatic. Anyone can settle expired series onchain, sending each payout to the buyer's wallet and returning unused collateral to the writer. Each market lists several expiries, so you choose how long you want to hold a view.

Where Options Fit on Injective

Injective has spent nearly two years bringing new markets onchain. AIX launched as its first index perpetual in January 2025. The H100 GPU market followed that August, and pre-IPO perpetuals brought OpenAI, SpaceX, Anthropic, and Perplexity onchain in October 2025. Today, 47% of Injective's active perpetual markets are tied to real-world assets.

Options add a new instrument on top of that lineup. The SICI perpetual is live on mainnet with up to 10x leverage for direct exposure to compute prices. SICI options on testnet show how a capped, fully backed position on the same index behaves.

FAQ

Which Markets Can I Trade?

Initial markets include SICI, US500, US Tech, gold (XAU), silver (XAG), and WTI crude oil, with calls and puts on each.

What Backs Each Option?

USDC. The writer locks the option's full maximum payout when they sell it, and it stays locked until expiry.

Can I Lose More Than the Premium?

A buyer's maximum loss is the premium they pay. A writer's maximum loss is the collateral they lock minus the premium they collect. Both numbers are fixed before the trade.

Why Are Calls and Puts Capped?

The cap gives every option a fixed maximum payout. That lets the writer lock the full amount in USDC upfront, with no margin and no liquidations.

How Is SICI Priced?

LO:TECH builds and prices SICI from GPU rental marketplace data and strikes the index every hour. The full methodology is in the SICI launch post.

What Can Developers Build With Injective Options?

White-label options exchanges, new derivatives protocols, and custom financial products. Each one runs on Injective's options infrastructure, so teams skip building it themselves.

About Injective

Injective is the first blockchain purpose-built for finance, enabling users, institutions, and AI agents to trade, tokenize, and transact at scale. Proudly made in America, Injective provides foundational blockchain infrastructure for global markets, with embedded financial primitives spanning stablecoins, real-world assets, payments, and programmable perpetuals through a unified onchain engine. Injective is used by Fortune 500 companies, banks, fintechs, and governments to power an open economy where any asset can be accessed anytime, from anywhere. Builders can deploy across multiple virtual machines like WASM and EVM, connect to native financial modules, and launch markets with deep liquidity from day one. INJ is the native token powering the rapidly growing Injective ecosystem and the new internet economy.

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