Jupiter Founder Meow to Critics of JUP Airdrop: ‘Give Me a Break’ - Ep. 602

Feb 2, 2024

Meow, co-founder of Jupiter, a DEX aggregation protocol on Solana, faces criticism over his platform's recent airdrop launch. He argues many concerns stem from misinformation and defends his decisions, including the aggressive pricing strategy. Meow discusses the evolution of Jupiter and its innovative features like dollar-cost averaging. He shares insights on the launch of the memecoin WEN as a precursor for JUP and his vision for enabling companies to publicly list on-chain. Expect a candid conversation about market strategies and community trust.

Ask episode

AI Snips

Chapters

Transcript

Episode notes

INSIGHT

Jupiter's Evolution

Jupiter evolved from a DEX aggregator into a broader platform offering swaps, limit orders, DCA, perps, and a launchpad.
It boasts high usage on Solana, surpassing PancakeSwap and Uniswap in monthly active users.

ANECDOTE

DCA Use Case

Users leverage Jupiter's DCA feature for various purposes, particularly buying low-liquidity coins incrementally.
This strategy minimizes price slippage and mitigates risks associated with large, immediate buys.

ANECDOTE

Meow's Crypto Origins

Meow's crypto journey began after a chance encounter at a Dogecoin party in San Francisco around 2016/2017.
He then advised various projects, including Portfolio (acquired by FTX), InstaDApp, Kyber, and co-founded WBTC.

Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode

Get the app

While Solana DeFi protocol Jupiter staged what was by most measures a very successful airdrop launch on Wednesday, achieving a market cap of close to $800 million, the company’s critics pointed out numerous ways the company seemed to unfairly enrich itself in the process. While Jupiter’s founder, who goes by the pseudonym Meow, acknowledges he might have done some things differently, he finds the criticisms of the launch mostly based on “bad faith” and misinformation.

Meow joined Unchained to discuss the thinking behind the launch mechanics of JUP, how the prior launch of memecoin WEN served as a dry run for JUP, whether the aggressive pricing strategy of JUP was a mistake, and what he hopes to achieve with Jupiter next, including the possibility of enabling companies of all kinds to list themselves publicly on chain.

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Fountain, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Pandora, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform.

Show highlights:

What Jupiter is and how it extends its functionality beyond mere token swapping
What users are primarily utilizing the dollar-cost-average feature of Jupiter for
Meow’s background in crypto and how he ended up in the Solana ecosystem
Why a launchpad seemed the ideal choice for Jupiter's token launch
What prompted the decision to release WEN, a memecoin, before launching JUP
Meow's response to criticisms regarding the launchpad's mechanics
Whether the aggressive pricing strategy for Jupiter was a misstep
How Meow feels about being targeted for criticism
What's on the horizon for Jupiter as a platform following the airdrop

Jupiter Founder Meow to Critics of JUP Airdrop: ‘Give Me a Break’ - Ep. 602

Jupiter's Evolution

DCA Use Case

Meow's Crypto Origins

Show highlights:

Thank you to our sponsors!

Guest:

Links