decrypt.co
In a characteristically extensive Twitter post, Jupiter’s pseudonymous founder Meow outlined three “OG” Solana projects that seek to launch their own tokens with the aid of Jupiter’s “LFG Launchpad.”
Those projects include Sanctum, a liquid staking service; Sharky, a platform for NFT-backed loans; and deBridge, an infrastructure provider for cross-chain digital asset trading.
Over the next two weeks, Meow said, those three projects will introduce themselves to the Jupiter community through town hall meetings and a variety of social media outreach initiatives. At an unspecified future date, the Jupiter community will then decide—via a JUP-backed vote in the Jupiter DAO—whether to allow any of those projects to launch tokens through the LFG Launchpad.
Jupiter: Let's Go!
Hello space catdets! Over the last few months, we built a robust community of catdets with a common vision, scaled up our infrastructure to handle many levels of volume, tested a lot of things together, and overcame a hell lot of adversity together.
And now,…
— meow 🥧 (@weremeow) February 7, 2024
Meow emphasized that control over this approval process will be solely in the hands of the Jupiter community, not Jupiter’s leadership or internal team.
“It is… crucial to remember that LFG is a community initiative,” Meow wrote. “The team should play NO ROLE in deciding if a project is suitable to be launched.”
But the three projects chosen for this inaugural token launch vetting process appear to have been handpicked by Meow and the Jupiter team, not Jupiter community members.
Decrypt reached out to Meow for clarification on that matter, and as to whether the Jupiter community will be able to nominate projects for token launches in the future, but did not immediately receive a response.
Last week, during the much-anticipated launch of the JUP token, tensions flared in the crypto industry regarding the power wielded by Jupiter’s internal team in the project’s new ecosystem.
While JUP’s launch was in many regards a resounding success, the token’s debut was marred by criticism that its allocation structure disproportionately benefited the Jupiter team, and constituted an implicit initial token offering (ICO).
The controversy—which was vocally dismissed by Meow—mainly centered around a 250 million JUP launch liquidity pool created by the Jupiter team, that pulled tokens from the team’s half of the total 10 billion JUP supply.
Today, that launch liquidity pool closed right on schedule, in a process that appears to have only boosted the token. JUP touched $0.59 this morning according to CoinGecko, a 14% jump from yesterday. It has since settled down to $0.55, a 5% increase compared to a day ago.