https://x.com/weremeow/status/1734709616762618159?s=20Over the last week, as everyone was hunting me for JUP updates, I must confess to being very inspired by this video instead.
https://x.com/weremeow/status/1734709616762618159?s=20
I mean, check this out - the exquisite level of care he takes to get the cat ready. The cat is now well-fed, very clean, and at peace. And thatās a cat ready to tackle the incredibly messy world ahead with all kinds of possibilities and adversities. And thatās the amount of care we aspire to get Jupiter to as we ready for JUP.
As much as we would love to just launch JUP and get back to building world-class tech, we also want to make sure all the key things that are important to us - the token distribution, the ethos, making sure no one is left behind - are clearly decided, communicated, and clarified, because things are really quite different after the genesis moment.
Some of these are pretty controversial topics, but thatās the whole point of me highlighting them now. I hope to have these discussions as early as possible so we start JUP with as much common understanding and alignment as possible across every part of the stack.
Because, as I have said from day one, this is not just my journey, this is ours.
Since cats have small brains and did not go to MIT or Jane Street, we cannot process super complicated token plans and confusing power dynamics.
So instead, hereās a pie with cats:
Tokenomics reflect the ethos of a project, and our key ethos is as simple as it gets - For a project like Jupiter, there needs to be an equal weight between a focused entity able to constantly recruit world-class talent, build product, and execute strategy, and a wider community able to fact-check, counterweight, and help to course-correct.
As such, the 10B JUP will be 50% managed by the team, 50% distributed to the community. Perfectly balanced, as all cats should be. We believe this balance will be extremely important to the long-term success of Jupiter. The community needs to trust the team and give room for maneuver, while the team needs to trust the community and invite everyone to be genuine stakeholders. Without this understanding, it will just be endless angst on both sides, the root cause of the classic ādevs do somethingā phenomenon.
The major change from the green paper is that there is no more token sale. Instead, the 20% will now be divided between 10% for liquidity provision, and 10% for community contributors and grants.
For the team managed component, only the 10% of liquidity provision will be used in the first year. The 20% for the current team will start vesting after a year for 2 years. The remaining 20% will be the strategic reserve, used for future team members, future strategic investors, and for past Mercurial stakeholders.
The last component will be be locked for at least a year, with a minimum of six monthsā notice given to the community before any liquidity event can happen. Each of these pools will be held in separate muti-sigs for easy trackability by the public.
For the community component, we expect 40% to be broken up over 4 rounds of āgrowing the pieā airdrops. We are very excited about the availability of 10% for community contributors and grants - this allocation, likely given to the DAO to administer, should give a lot of incentive for the community to participate in initiatives to grow Jupiter, vet projects for the Solana ecosystem, and drive the decentralized meta - all of which are our main objectives.
Iāll share more thoughts and a proposed roadmap on how the DAO can incrementally grow in terms of scope, participants, responsibilities to become what I hope can become the most productive DAO in the history of crypto not just for Jupiter but for advancing the whole crypto ecosystem forward.
It will take time, years, but based on what Iām seeing so far, Iām actually incredibly bullish our DAO can get there. Slowly and incrementally for sure, but we will. One reason why Iām so bullish on this is because of the unique, positive, expansive vibes of the Jupiter and Solana community. Will elaborate more next time.
Now that there is no more presale, the launch will be very simple. 15-20% will be circulating initially. 10% is from the first airdrop and 5% for liquidity provision, which will either be mostly or entirely on-chain. We are also leaving open the possibility of having up to 5% more liquidity be available at launch. Details for claiming and the mechanism for liquidity provision will be shared over the next couple of weeks.
We would like it to happen in Jan, and currently coordinating with a range of partners to make it happen.
At Jupiter, we want to be a leading force in driving the decentralized meta forward - aka a world where everyone not just buys crypto, but actually uses crypto in their daily life as well.
As the best trading venue in crypto (and since the first thing everyone does is trade), Jupiter is the ideal spear tip for leading the charge, and we will need plenty of PIE:
Given the massive amount of PIE needed to convert the masses to the decentralized meta, I would like to align on the key ethos and ideas we need over the next few years in order to generate enough alpha to make it happen.
Over the last few interviews, I have always been clear about using Jupiter and JUP as a core leverage point for driving the decentralized meta.
https://x.com/0xMert_/status/1733348900113711610?s=20
When people start to use Jupiter for whatever reason, they donāt just use Jupiter, they take a step into the increasingly unlimited potential of decentralized technologies - a world thatās so utterly different from the ones they are used to.
One thing that has been disappointing for me is engaging in conversations over the past 2 weeks where there were many airdrop recipients who had been extremely against starting the second growth airdrop purely for the reasons of being afraid that their own bags will be diluted - to the point of labeling new users as āairdrop farmersā, and calling themselves āloyal usersā.
Protectionism sure starts early, but letās not play into it. Careful and strategic emissions are of course crucial, thatās why we are fostering a very strong culture of communicating strategy and getting feedback for every major phase, and why the interplay between the community and team is going to be crucial.
But to fight for your own bags exclusively so early in the game and to draw a line between users so early without consideration of the āgrow the pieā ethos we need to set as well as the broader strategic vision is honestly not cool.
Also, it is my view that the max possible gains for the next couple of years will not be to focus on JUP utility, but rather brainstorming how to leverage JUP for maximum growth of Jupiter, Solana, and the decentralized meta - for the possible space is far, far bigger than we can imagine.
On that note, BONK is a really good example of what can happen when we take an expansive view of the universe, vs a constructive narrow perspective, for the universe strongly favors positive growth.
We will accept growing the meta strategically and pragmatically as one of our responsibilities - and JUP is one crucial leverage point we can use.
A cat that can hunt on its own is always going to be far more secure than a cat that needs to be fed constantly.
We would like Jupiter to be a world-class team that has strong revenues and hence operationally independent from the need to constantly fundraise for the sake of salaries and opex. That will set us up to be able to make the long-term decisions and build the amazing products that match up with our intentions to be a positive force for decades.
The core swap aggregation, which is a crucial part of Solana liquidity infrastructure, has always been and will always be completely free, much like Googleās search. In a DeFi first, we released the binary for free unrestricted usage 2 weeks ago, and will be taking more unprecedented steps next year to make it even more of a community resource.
Jupiter charges fees for limit orders, DCA, and perps and will keep these fees as team revenue. All fees will of course be on-chain and fully visible on dashboards we will be publishing. Any investments made by team members have to be clearly reflected to avoid any semblance of conflicts of interest, particularly when it comes to Jupiter Start projects. I will personally refrain from making investments this year.
Due to the capped AUM for JLP, liquidity for perps can be rather limited at times, making it difficult to place positions. In addition, demand for JLP is extremely high, so the pool fills up extremely fast, in the matter of minutes every time we raise.
As a result, though, users are often unable to place positions and face rather high fees when placing positions. While we are working very hard to improve the system and increase the cap, being responsible and increasing the cap incrementally remains our top priority.
Thankfully, there are a range of excellent perp protocols on Solana, including @zetamarkets, @DriftProtocol, @mangomarkets, and many more upcoming ones like @FlashTrade_ - all of whom are our good friends, and we will do our best to encourage growth of the overall perp markets in Solana, not just our own, starting with an Educate program for Zeta next week.
In fact, after discovering the potential of on-chain perps on Jupiter, users are experimenting with various protocols, and learning what we have always known - Solana is by far the best place in crypto for on-chain perps, bar none. This will also get much better as liquidity on-chain increases exponentially over time.
Ethos 3: Help The Solana and Crypto Ecosystem We do not see ourselves as a platform/product/protocol per se, but rather as a full-stack ecosystem push to help the Solana and crypto ecosystem win.
We will do so in 3 main ways:
We believe Solana is the best blockchain for onboarding the next billion users. And when we draw people to using Jup, they also end up using everything else on Solana.
When we have a full set of powerful trading products that work as well as their centralized counterparts, they have no reason to go back to CEXes.
And when there is a critical mass of use cases and fun stuff you can do on-chain, there will be increasingly fewer reasons to pull your capital out.
Lastly, we believe we can move the entire crypto space forward by being a shining example of what decentralized products, ethos and communities can do, hopefully playing a part in moving past the bad examples set by the last generation of fallen kings.
Over the past 5 weeks, we have spent enormous effort on making sure that everyone involved so far will be part of the journey at the very beginning. There are 3 main groups: Mercurial Stakeholders, Jupiter Users and Community Contributors.
For those who are unaware, Jupiter is a new project started when we were working on Mercurial (which transited to Meteora on Feb 23). Here are a couple of posts summarizing the background:
https://twitter.com/0x__fp/status/1721491581872586992 https://twitter.com/_ilmoi/status/1730789327456678330
Last week, after many rounds of public and private discourse, we finalized the 5% JUP position for Mercurial stakeholders (as of Feb 2023), which will come from the strategic reserve managed by the team. We also communicated the decision accordingly both to early Mercurial investors as well as in the Meteora discord.
https://meteoraag.medium.com/update-for-mercurial-stakeholders-as-of-feb-2023-2bf091627e52
https://discord.com/channels/841152225564950528/981108341482868736/1183160599073529926
https://discord.com/channels/841152225564950528/854683268519559189/1183176837019484230
NGL, it was extremely gratifying to connect with and get the approval of community members who have been part of the journey since very early on. Afterall, this has been one heck of a journey and these are absolute OG legends like @durdenwannabe, @PigFahy, @0xSoju and @adidogceo who have been with us through the entire cycle!
Besides the JUP position, Mercurial stakeholders will also be the starting holders of @MeteoraAG, which after 2 years of absolutely relentless hard work led by the incredible @hellochow, @sudoku_defi and many other super talented team members is gaining great traction in terms of product, community, and DAO formation.
https://x.com/MeteoraAG/status/1730784233885474869?s=20 https://x.com/MeteoraAG/status/1735538511736889434?s=20 https://x.com/adidogCEO/status/1733658028509917215?s=20
I aim to write a full blog post about the founding history of Jupiter next week, and the various twists and turns leading to where we are currently. I deeply thank everyone who had been involved from day one, and particularly, the critical voices that have been instrumental in guiding us towards the final arrangement. Even if the criticisms have been extremely hard to swallow and felt very unfair at times, I doubt that I would have got it right if not for those voices.
Lastly, if you are a Mercurial stakeholder as of Feb 23, and you are not sure how to participate in the coming events, please reach out, we will spare no effort in making sure you are all caught up.
The other thing we have been spending a ton of time on is the 10 thousand community airdrop review submissions, and we are finally almost done, thanks to the ungodly effort put in by @9yointern.
AFAIK, we were the first project to openly debate the airdrop mechanism, to openly explain the criteria used, and also the first to open up a mechanism to allow people to protest the criteria. This is of course actually tremendously time-consuming and tiring, but we think it is an important process because we want to make sure we really tried our best to take into account every single point of view as well as do our best to address every complaint that came in.
The final allocations will be released tomorrow by and there will be no more changes afterward. One thing here - do not harass our intern any further, regardless of your unhappiness.
Sheās the most patient, anon-loving, SQL-churning, pepe-aware intern in the world, and everyone needs to appreciate the immense effort she put into it. We are normally pretty chill, but any mean messages will result in your airdrop being zeroed. Some things just cross the line, especially if someone super nice is trying her goddamn best.
Another major area of concern were also those with compromised accounts. There is no way to solve this totally elegantly, but what we will do for now is to not allow claiming on those wallets at the onset, and will likely have some kind of social media identification process and allowing claiming if there isnāt any double claims.
Finally, next week there will be a site for anyone who has contributed meaningfully to Jupiter prior to Nov 2nd to connect their Twitter, Discord, and associated address.
Similarly, this part will take likely take 2-3 weeks to finish reviewing, and will be a tremendous use of effort on our end. But yet, as I mentioned in one of the recent podcasts - it is important for me because I would really like to recognize everyone who took the extra effort to help Jupiter out, even when we were just a product with absolutely no indications of rewards whatsoever.
It means a fuck ton to us, and I will try my best to make sure you are recognized in one way or another. š©·
At Breakpoint, I presented our āGrow The Pieā presentation and green paper. Ever since then, we have been flooded with an absolutely incredible level of feedback, and we are extremely grateful for the energy and enthusiasm that everyone have shown us. Of course, all the wens and airdrop demands can get pretty intense at times, but itās all part of the job.
To all the airdrop recipients, we are very grateful to be able to provide a present, and it is gratifying to hear from some of you regarding how it could being a really big difference in your life. Thatās exactly what we are here for!
Also, I understand some of you are very anxious to claim it and maybe liquidate it for more stable assets. Donāt worry, it will happen soon in Jan, and we will do our best to make the whole process as seamless as possible and even make it as easy as possible for you to sell it or easily set the price you want for your JUP.
My only request is this - I hope you keep at least a bit of JUP of the airdrop, because regardless of anything, you were an important part of the early journey. It will mean a lot to us if everyone involved at the beginning kept at least a bit of JUP with them.
That way, we can keep in touch as we go through the coming years together, which I am sure will be anything but boring.
Afterall, tokens are fungible, but memories are not. š±