T-Mobile parent Deutsche Telekom joins Binance-incubated Injective as validator

Deutsche Telekom is now a validator for Injective, the high-speed, interoperable Layer 1 blockchain focused on DeFi, according to an announcement on Thursday. The move marks Deutsche’s latest step into the crypto space. 

“We are thrilled to have one of the world’s leading telecommunications companies partnering with Injective to help secure our network and validate transactions,” said Inkective CEO Eric Chen in a statement. “This is yet another example of Web3 becoming more and more institutional and fully integrated into … society.”

According to the announcement, Deutsche recently started working to support transaction validation on Injective. Like other staking protocols, the network pays validators a portion of the network's staking rewards and transaction fees totaling over 10% APY, depending on network conditions. 

Injective started as a Cosmos-based decentralized exchange running on a dedicated appchain that used cross-chain bridges to enable trades on platforms, including Ethereum and Polkadot. It was one of the first to use a more traditional order book model rather than an automated market maker, like Uniswap, to manage liquidity.

The protocol was incubated by Binance and is backed by prominent investors such as Jump Crypto, Pantera and Mark Cuban.

Deutsche Telekom is one of the world's leading telecommunications companies, with over 250 million customers. Headquartered in Bonn, Germany, it provides mobile, broadband and fixed-line services around the world, including in the U.S. through its subsidiary T-Mobile.

The firm has steadily been carving out a significant presence in crypto since at least 2020, particularly as a validator. Deutsche has run or is running validators on Polygon, Polkadot, Chainlink, Celo, Flow and, more recently, NEAR. Deutsche has said it has also made strategic investments in a number of those chains’ native tokens. 

It also has a footprint securing the two largest blockchains as node operator for Ethereum, Bitcoin and the Lightning network. Last year, it launched a Bitcoin mining pilot with Bankhaus Metzler using renewable energy.