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Solana is up. At $151.30, SOL is back at monthly highs, reversing an oh-so-steep early April dip. It’s pretty well outperforming broader crypto markets, which aren’t doing too badly themselves as they ride a wave of short squeezes, ETF inflows, and a sudden softening of trade war rhetoric.
Some ecosystem tokens caught the bullish wave, too, including Jupiter’s JUP, which is up 25% on the week.
Yesterday, a report from Blockworks Research laid out all the ways in which Jupiter is becoming irreplaceable. Jupiter now commands 95% of DEX aggregator volume and 80% of perpetuals trading on Solana. It generates north of $280 million in annualized revenue and still trades at one of the lowest P/S ratios in DeFi.
Since launching in 2021 as a swap router, Jupiter has made no secret of its intent to become Solana’s super-app: home to perps, its own launchpad, a mobile wallet, a memecoin terminal, and more recently, NFT integrations via its DRiP Haus acquisition. Its liquidity index fund, JLP, is now the third-largest TVL pool on Solana — behind only Jito and Kamino. Its recent API upgrades (here’s looking at you, Ultra Mode) are quietly reshaping user behavior. I mean, come on. It’s pulling in $5–10 million in optional monthly fees.
Jupiter’s routing upgrades (Juno), cross-chain testnet (Jupnet) and rapid-fire acquisitions (SolanaFM, Coinhall, SonarWatch, Ultimate Wallet, Moonshot) signal a protocol building not just liquidity, but full-stack control. It’s a surgical level of vertical integration rarely seen: data, analytics, interface and distribution, all consolidated under a single roof. Its treasury is buying back JUP at speed; so far, they’re over $20 million repurchased in under two months.
Risks worth watching mostly deal with looming token unlocks. The Jupiter team took heat recently-ish over its compensation and governance transparency. Plus, competition sharpens when winners emerge — Kamino, Titan and Drift aren’t going quietly. But Jupiter is digging a deep moat, and it’s doing this without relying on mercenary incentives. Ultra Mode usage is on the ascent. Aggregator dominance is stable. Perps volumes remain consistently above $25 billion per month.
While macro flows, ETF optimism, and geopolitical thawing may have sparked the week’s rally, Jupiter has helped things along by scaffolding Solana’s commercial core.