Last week, users received the largest Solana-based airdrop to date from Jupiter, the network’s leading DEX aggregator and its most actively used protocol.
In total, 40% of the supply will be airdropped to users in three additional phases over the year, with timelines to be determined. Another 10% is reserved for community contributors and grants, while the Jupiter team retains the remaining 50% for team members, strategic reserves, and liquidity provisioning, with various lockup and vesting periods. Notably, Jupiter launched without any prior fundraising or token presales.
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The airdrop posed a considerable stress test for the Solana network’s capacity, testing its capacity to manage such a significant surge in the number of transactions. The Jupiter team preemptively launched a test memecoin on the LFG platform a week earlier to identify and address potential issues. Still, some users faced issues, struggling to submit successful claims or buy transactions, while the Solana network maintained its operational stability with no interruptions in block processing.
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Jupiter holds a dominant position within the Solana ecosystem, managing 80% of the network's non-bot transaction volume, and is the most-used DeFi trading platform by unique wallets. The team has recently launched additional products, including a new perpetual futures protocol, and has outlined plans to expand further in the coming years.
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The launch, however, has also received its portion of criticism, which has focused mainly on two aspects: (i) substantial fees (~$50 million) generated by the launchpad, which users were compelled to use, and (ii) Jupiter's implied intention to withdraw liquidity from the launchpad pool a week post-launch, potentially leading to substantial market volatility.
Jupiter’s CEO Meow has responded quickly to these concerns, arguing that Jupiter, like any team, has to pay for using LFG and emphasizing the team's commitment to ensuring liquidity in additional pools post-launch.
While there is some merit to these critiques, it’s important to highlight that these facts were all communicated before the launch and publicized widely.
With Jupiter DEX aggregator’s successful launch, Solana continues to demonstrate that network upgrades implemented over the past year have led to tangible improvements in its reliability and user experience.
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