At Jupiter, one of the core things we really, really care about is making sure that JUP is as great as it can be. It is not about PA - there’s only so much we can do at any given moment and so much that’s out of our control - but it is about making sure that we do everything we can to make sure we make JUP as meaningful as possible - as a symbol, as an asset, as an core mechanism for participation and alignment.
It sounds pretty crazy, but JUP has only been launched for barely a year. SInce then, we have become the world’s largest active DAO, anchored by one of crypto’s best communities and have a whole new comprehensive set of products and platforms that are happening right now and in the future.
In this essay, i would like to explain what $JUP means to us, the core principles from which we go about building it, and how we want to assure the community of our long term commitment to make Jupiter the best it can be - for the ecosystem, for the holders and for the world.
Before that, let’s do a quick recap, shall we?
Over much of the first year, there were lots of user concerns and feedback over the the high fdv, fear of the next jupuary, questions about the long term roadmap of jupiter - and we aimed to answer them comprehensively by the the Catstamn
Over the last few weeks, we crossed a few key milestones and also answered some of the key burning questions people had about JUP over the first year of JUP around
Along with the airdrop, the first team cliff and the massive 30% burn (which includes the team burning 30% of their own alloc), we expanded the holder base further, further decentralized the dao, brought down the FDV and increased the circulating from 14% - 40%, making the core tokenomics much healthier than before.
At Catstanbul, we also launched several major upgrades to key platforms, announced new ones, and formalized the 3 core pillars of Jupiter moving forward:
All in all, these did something major – we answered the key concerns that the community had about the token, completed the big event that was causing a lot of fud for months, and anchored the short, mid and long term vision of Jupiter (psss: aggregate everything)
With these new foundations in place, we are well equipped to start thinking about the next steps for $JUP
To understand everything we are doing with $JUP, you need to first understand how we see $JUP. To the outside world. $JUP is an asset, but to us, $JUP is something way deeper:
Given these lofty goals, it’s no surprise that we spend an insane amounts of time and effort focused on the core principles of $JUP.
We are aiming to make JUP the GOAT token, which means making it the best token four key dimensions:
Governance: JUP must power the most meaningful governance in crypto. We see this already today, with the JUP DAO governance deciding absolutely essential elements of Jupiter’s future, including Working Group budgets and Tokenomics decisions (e.g. the 30% supply burn, Jupuary, etc).
Organic: What you see is what you get. In an industry filled with tokens powered by shady backroom dealings, JUP must remain organic. We’ve never done OTC trades, never paid KOLs to pump the token, and never attempted to manipulate the market.
Alignment: Long term synergy between holders, community, team & ecosystem. Tokens, when designed well, are exceptionally powerful tools to coordinate internet strangers towards a common goal - in our case, growing the pie and accelerating the decentralization meta. $JUP aligns not only the team towards this goal, but community members and DAO voters as well.
Transparent: Most tokens purposefully try to obfuscate; we do the opposite. $JUP is the only major token to have conducted not one, not two, but three token audits, allowing us to fully account for every token since genesis. All of our multisigs are public, and we account for every large token movement.
The GOAT framework is a result of endless effort, work and thinking throughout the first year of JUP, and we believe these GOAT framework is a really great framework for anchoring JUP as a long term token and being the gold standard for token integrity.
Overall we reject classifications of JUP as a governance/utility token and whatever not CT likes to classify things - we just want to make JUP the GOAT token.
At this point in time, we would like to share 3 things we are doing to assure the community that we are fully aligned with the community, ecosystem long term.
One thing I have always prided myself on is that we have relentlessly focused on investing in the future of Jupiter and the ecosystem, well ahead of personal gain. Over the years, we have consistently invested through endless struggles and downturns into the future of the project and i believe our actions and treasury management backs up this statement.
To further anchor confidence in the project, we will conduct a full independent audit of me, siong, Jupiter treasury, Meteora treasury, and the $JUP token, led by the well-respected @wassielawyer who will help us identify an auditor and design the audit. This audit will cover both of our individual holdings and will report on any financial issues, excessive personal gain, or discrepancy in $JUP usage, etc.
Over 3 public token audits, we have obviously done a lot in terms of making sure the $JUP token is preserved, but this will bring in an external team to validate our audits as well. This audit will be published on our upcoming jup.com website, which should show clearly our commitment to long term success of the project.
As part of the plan to drive strong alignment between the users, the token holders and the team, we are excited to work with an independent 3rd party to create the Litterbox Trust. We are committing here and now to programmatically send 50% of our protocol revenues over the next 2 years to the Litterbox Trust. The Trust itself will operate to accumulate JUP for strategic purposes.
By the time you read this, the Accumulation Plan will have already started. We know the community has been waiting for this for a few weeks, but it took us a while to consult with all the various legal and operational parties to identify the ideal structure that benefits the Jupiverse without constricting the future of the $JUP token.
Over the past year, we have gathered an absolutely world class team via a series of recruitments and acquisitions, including 2 unannounced ones. This new talent is now anchoring all 3 key pillars of jupiter - jup.ag, jupiverse, jupnet. For the acquisitions, any payments to the project’s investors are paid via the treasury with no impact on JUP whatsoever.
For the new team members in the past year however, we need to align them with long term upside in JUP.
To do so, we have two options. First, we could draw from the team’s strategic reserves. However, this will increase emissions over the next few years, which we would like to avoid. Furthermore, I am the main one who initiated these acquisitions, and I would like to be accountable for these decisions.
So I propose a second option: I use my entire personal allocation (280M JUP) to front these JUP allocations. I will then get my allocation back only in 2030, with a 220M JUP bonus from the Community Reserve.
In other words, if the vote passes, i will receive zero JUP for the next 5 years, but will receive 500M jup in 2030 itself. If the community is unhappy with my performance for any reason before the 2030 milestone, the DAO will be able to veto and halt the bonus.
Full proposal will be updated in this blog post upon questions and feedback from the community.
Everything written above - whether it’s the litterbox trust, the 2030 proposal, relentlessly investing in the future, not taking personal gains right now - it’s about one single, simple thing - a vote of confidence in ourselves and the future.
The main issue in crypto is simple - we talk a lot about how crypto is the future, but we often show an astonishing lack of willingness to play the long game and to be accountable for our results.
So there you go, we are not perfect, we make ton of mistakes, i am a stupid cat most of the time - but one thing is for sure - we believe in what we do, we believe in being accountable for long term results and we believe in the long term future of crypto to truly change the world, short term swings be damned.
Most of all, tho?
We believe in the Jupiverse.