Jupiter, a key decentralised exchange aggregator on the Solana network, unveiled its new token, $JUP, through a significant airdrop on Wednesday.
The initial total supply of $JUP tokens was set at 1.35 billion, a decrease from the initially planned 1.7 billion. This supply is allocated with 1 billion for airdrops, 100 million for loans and liquidity purposes, and 250 million for a launch pool.
The distribution of the tokens was extensive, reaching around 955,000 wallets that had previously interacted with Jupiter before 2 November. This airdrop, one of the largest in the Solana blockchain’s history, was valued at approximately $700 million.
Major centralised exchanges like Bybit, Binance, Bitfinex, and OKX were well-prepared for the token’s launch, indicating strong support within the crypto community for this new development. These platforms, having already listed the token, commenced trading shortly after the launch.
Soaring post-airdrop
As news of the airdrop spread, the demand for the tokens surged, driving up its price.
$JUP witnessed a remarkable increase in its price immediately following its introduction at 10 a.m. ET, starting at around $0.41 and escalating to $0.72 by press time. This brought its fully diluted market cap to over $6 billion.
This surge can be attributed to the widespread interest in Jupiter’s project and the growing enthusiasm in the Solana ecosystem.
More significant than the token’s market value was the resilience of the blockchain it operates on. Observers reported that network robustly withstood the flurry of activity surrounding $JUP.
Solana efficiently managed the high volume of users attempting to claim the token and subsequently trade it on decentralised exchanges (DEXs), all with minimal issues.
However, a day after the airdrop and launch, the token declined by over 70%, trading in the red side of its charts.
Recently, Jupiter exchange had made headlines for recording an impressive daily trading volume of $520 million. This helped it to overtake Uniswap v3’s Ethereum market.
Few hiccups in the launch
Despite the initial success, the launch experienced some technical difficulties. Some RPC nodes, vital for facilitating communication between wallets and the network, struggled under the heavy user demand, particularly in the first 30 minutes of the airdrop.
Validators on Solana’s Discord server noted these issues, with one commenting on the challenging user experience during the initial phase of the launch.
An hour into the launch, over 20% of the 1 billion $JUP reserved for the airdrop had been claimed, indicating the high level of participation in the event.
Jupiter’s developers had anticipated potential issues due to the airdrop’s magnitude and had dedicated January, humorously termed “Jupuary” by one of its pseudonymous founders, Weremeow, to rigorous system testing.
The team also conducted two additional airdrops, mockJUP and WEN, earlier in the month to test their infrastructure, which provided valuable insights for the JUP token launch.
Confusion over the wrong token
Amidst the excitement of the airdrop, there was also a notable mix-up involving another token with the same ticker, $JUP.
This led to a surge in trading volume and price for the unrelated $JUP token, as traders mistakenly invested in it.
The seven-year-old defunct Ethereum-based protocol spiked more than 430% hours before the launch of Solana-based Jupiter’s JUP airdrop. However, it plummeted later.
