Everything You Need to Know About Jupiter’s $JUP Airdrop on Solana

Today, Jan. 31, the Solana decentralized exchange aggregator Jupiter releases its long-awaited token, $JUP. Following on from founder weremeow’s $WEN, which was airdropped to people who have been active on Solana, JUP’s official token is available to people who used Jupiter Exchange before November 2023. Here’s a rundown of who qualifies, how to claim, and more.

(Update: On Feb. 2, weremeow faced a series of criticisms of the planned management of $JUP’s liquidity pool, with prominent Web3 observers concerned about excessive profiteering from the team. He clarified the plans for the pool, called a DLMM, in threads on X and appearances on Spaces with leading crypto influencers and journalists.)

The claim starts at 10 am EST on Jan. 31—and before that time, you can check how much your wallet will receive at their claim website—lfg.jup.ag. If you use Phantom Wallet, you can also claim directly from within Phantom (it will notify you how many $JUP you have to claim and will take you to the claim page).

You will need a little bit of Solana to claim–and transaction fees may spike when the claim opens. Claims are open until July 31, so don’t worry if you are away from your wallets (or remember a wallet you completely forgot about)!

1.35 billion tokens will be available, released at an initial price of .4032 USDC, with a top initial price of .69 USDC. There’s more information about the tokenomics, release procedure, and how tokens held by the project will be controlled linked on the claim website.

There will be ten billion $JUP tokens in existence, with four billion slated to be released to $JUP users over a period spanning years, so if you didn’t get any airdrop this time in your Solana wallet, keep using the exchange, and it’s likely you’ll get some in future.

Although the price of weremeow’s $WEN token has been quite volatile this week, there are positive signs for $JUP. According to blockchain data providers AlliumLabs, Jupiter Exchange has the highest monthly active users across decentralized exchanges on all blockchains, eclipsing products like PancakeSwap and Uniswap.

Anonymous Jupiter founder weremeow is unapologetically confident about his strategy for $JUP, which aims to build on the long-term popularity of the protocol rather than capitalizing on the rapid influx of liquidity to Solana in Q4 2023.

“We have chosen to take a pragmatic yet utopian approach, focused on maximum transparency, zero manipulation of liquidity, zero supply squeeze, simultaneous participation, open market price discovery, and for the team to get the capital they need in the most long-term beneficial way possible,” he said in a Jan. 31 post on X.

He added: “This open and non-controlled approach obviously leaves a lot of room for chaos and unknowns, but I strongly believe that these dynamics are the right, most retail-friendly, best way to build a community, and long-term advantageous to the project in the long run. It is not just for JUP; we wanted to create a new meta for launching tokens, and we know that if we do not do this for JUP, we will lose our chance to do this forever.”