The most active community produced the most disappointing Launchpad. What exactly did Jupiter do wrong?

Author: Luccy, BlockBeats

Since the beginning of this year, the market has been extremely lacking in new narratives. The brief bull market brought by ETFs has not truly injected new vitality into the crypto market, and meme coins have become the most profitable area, while the corresponding VC coins have faced repeated criticism. Especially for DeFi projects, there has been little stir during several rounds of capital rotation, and they still live in dire straits.

To bring value back, value coins are all looking for their own breakthrough. "Community consensus" is the unified answer they provide, and community activity has also become their indicator for judging the strength of consensus. Jupiter is one of "them."

Jupiter co-founder Meow had previously remained hidden in the crypto developer community, serving as the chief advisor for Instadapp, Kyber, and Blockfolio. He is a co-founder of the largest wrapped token, wBTC, and also one of the founding contributors of the Handshake project. However, these titles did not lead Meow to reveal his identity until two days before the JUP airdrop, when he made a public appearance and accepted an exclusive interview with Capital Club founder Luke Belmar.

In the interview, Meow emphasized the importance of community consensus multiple times. He criticized the current crypto world's abuse of the term "community," believing that only strong consensus can truly be called a "community," and it is consensus that shapes currency.

To this end, Jupiter has invested a lot of energy in building and maintaining the community. Coupled with the incident where PPP experimental partner Irene Zhao faced a crisis, and the JLP contract platform withstood the market crash to become the "best investment target," Jupiter has attracted enough attention for the community, but this attention seems to have brought little value increment to JUP.

The Hottest DEX Community

At last year's Solana Breakpoint hackathon, Meow's speech was hailed as one of the most popular. Feeling the consensus had accumulated amidst the cheers, he decided to take the first step to convert these users who love Jupiter into a community.

Jupiter aims to build the most vibrant, forward-looking, and non-professional community in the crypto space. To this end, Jupiter has established dedicated working groups for media channels such as Twitter, Discord, website, YouTube, and Reddit, with team members and community members jointly responsible for operations.

With careful operation and maintenance, Jupiter has created a thriving and lively community. According to Similarweb data, Twitter accounts for 66.25% of all Jupiter's social traffic. Overall, Jupiter's social traffic accounts for 3.49% of website traffic. Compared to Raydium, which is also called the new leader of Solana, Jupiter is better at converting social media influence into traffic, primarily relying on Twitter for dissemination. This also indirectly indicates that Jupiter has a closer interactive connection with the community.

The image above is Jupiter, and the image below is Raydium.

"Thousand-Person Meetings" Are Daily

Just as fan circles use different abbreviations to filter their own small groups, Jupiter is also creating its core circle with its unique language.

Meow has been creating different abbreviations, and in most cases, he does not provide textual explanations for these abbreviations; only by watching Jupiter's Planetary Call can one understand the meanings of the abbreviations. The audience seems to be willing to maintain a sense of pride in "only I understand," chatting with abbreviations in the comments section. Observers who want to integrate into the circle must also learn new vocabulary.

The Planetary Call is live-streamed every Wednesday at the same time on YouTube and Twitter, with Meow and Uplink leader Kash participating as hosts in each episode. Other team members share detailed updates on project developments, allowing the community to gain an in-depth understanding of the Jupiter ecosystem. Each episode on YouTube almost always exceeds 4,000 views, while Twitter views can reach tens of thousands.

The left image is the Jupiter YouTube live section, and the right image is the Twitter live stream of the 20th Jupiter Planetary Meeting.

Looking at the entire crypto ecosystem, it seems that only Ethereum can accomplish this workload. Ethereum holds weekly core developer calls hosted by the Ethereum Foundation. As a live meeting that has been held hundreds of times, its average YouTube views mostly do not exceed 500. When searching for keywords on Twitter, the first tweet on the homepage still dates back to 2022.

The left image is the Ethereum YouTube live section, and the right image shows Twitter search results for the keywords "ETH" and "ACD."

From an interaction perspective, the Jupiter live stream's comment section is always active, even flooding with messages, while the Ethereum meeting's interaction comment section is often blank. Each Jupiter video has comments, while Ethereum meetings have fewer comments, and there may even be bot advertisements.

The left image is the Jupiter Planetary Meeting, and the right image is the Ethereum core developer meeting.

In community proposals, DAO members can decide on the token distribution of each working group for Jupiter. Among them, the Uplink working group's budget has the least voting power, about 178 million. However, even with the current JUP staking numbers, the voting rate from four months ago still exceeded 50%. Additionally, most proposals pass with a voting ratio exceeding 70%, and abstentions remain below 15%.

From left to right are the core working group, website working group, Catdet (DC) working group, Reddit working group, and Uplink working group budget proposal.

Furthermore, to further "get closer to the people's hearts," Jupiter proposed a token supply reduction plan in mid-June, with the team voluntarily cutting 30% from the allocated tokens, resulting in a corresponding 30% reduction in token emissions. The remaining cuts will come from previously allocated distributions, such as limited partnerships and strategic reserves. This proposal was conducted on August 1, collecting over 160 million votes in just half a day. Ultimately, it passed with 95% support, receiving 274 million votes, setting a record for DAO voting rates.

Perhaps Jupiter believes that voting to decide token distribution is not enough. On July 31, they announced a draft agreement, which includes public reviews of JUP's distribution every six months; if any tokens are released, 100% disclosure of token sales; and if any tokens are released from reserves for strategic reasons, careful management of the release will ensure it is proportional to market liquidity, with at least three months' notice.

All wallets will have clear labels for easy tracking of JUP usage. Notably, all tokens allocated to the community will be distributed through DAO voting for complete visibility.

Additionally, to address the chaos of meme coins' PVP, Jupiter promotes PPP. According to Meow's explanation, the core focus of the PPP community should not be to attract others and hope to discard them, but to have more allies to build a common long-term future together.

To realize PPP, Jupiter first promoted the concept of PPP and even held a themed Planetary Call on PPP. In a live stream lasting an hour and a half, Meow and Kash conversed with six meme players. The retail participants in the meeting were not famous KOLs, and the recommended memes were not top-tier, yet it still attracted thousands of viewers, flooding the comments section with PPP.

Subsequently, Meow published an article explaining the PPP concept and conducted a PPP experiment, calling on the community to leave their Solana addresses in the comments section. In a situation of information asymmetry, the PPP experiment attracted hundreds of thousands of participants within a month.

"Let's Fucking Go"

In the process of continuously answering questions, Jupiter realized that merely having the community as bystanders was insufficient for true "activity"; they should be involved and become part of the builders.

Thus, Jupiter launched the Launchpad and handed the selection rights for launching projects to the community, leading to the birth of Jupiter DAO. In February, Jupiter launched the DAO, requiring a stake of 50 JUP to participate in voting. As of now, the total staked JUP exceeds 350 million, with unique addresses surpassing 550,000.

After the first test proposal passed, Jupiter immediately held the first LFG Launchpad vote, attracting over 200 million JUP votes. Notably, in Jupiter DAO, the voting power held by the public is roughly equal to that of whales. According to the data provided by Jupiter for LFG Phase 3, the voting power data and independent voting wallet data are quite consistent, with the winning projects receiving 59.4% of the voting power and 60.7% of independent voting wallets supporting them, showing close data alignment.

Not only does it give the community a sense of participation in voting, but Jupiter also involves DAO members in the entire process of the Launchpad. The Jupiter LFG Launchpad consists of four steps: application, presentation, voting, and launch.

Project applications require posting project introductions on the Jupiter forum, so the entire Jupiter community can serve as reviewers, not just the Jupiter team. The level of interaction between the project and the community is regarded as "community sentiment," which becomes a significant factor influencing Jupiter's decision-making for candidate selection. To become a candidate, participating projects must constantly pay attention to Jupiter community dynamics and answer members' questions, creating positive feedback that gradually earns enough traffic and attention for the entire ecosystem.

Candidate projects will receive a dedicated channel in the Jupiter official Discord group and hold AMA meetings with Jupiter, sequentially increasing opportunities for community communication and review. After the live stream, these AMA segments will be edited and re-released, with each segment's view count often reaching thousands. Ultimately, the winning project and the launch time for the Jupiter protocol token are determined.

From left to right are the AMA videos of the champion projects of the three LFG phases: Zeus, Sanctum, and deBridge.

Public voting greatly mobilizes community participation enthusiasm, with a large number of users participating in the Launchpad like investing in meme coins, leading to LFG being humorously referred to as the abbreviation for "Let's Fucking Go." According to Similarweb data, during the Launchpad period, the LFG official webpage received over 3.23 million visits. During the same period, the DAO held two LFG votes, with page visits exceeding 3.4 million, showing a close correlation in data.

As a platform that officially launched in April and has been operational for less than half a year, Jupiter Launchpad's traffic can be considered outstanding compared to other Launchpad platforms. At the end of last year, the four major on-chain Launchpad platforms that were extremely popular, namely Bounce Brand, BakerySwap, Analysoor, and TurtSat, had a total visit count of only 355,000, about one-tenth of Jupiter's.

In comparison to off-chain platforms, the most active Binance Launchpad has currently launched 93 projects, with a total of over 5.5 million unique participants. The number of launched projects and unique addresses is ten times that of Jupiter. In the past three months, Binance has launched six projects, with its Launchpad website visits reaching 6.26 million, while LFG, having launched three projects, has a visit count slightly exceeding half of Binance's.

Misaligned Consensus

The energy and results Jupiter has invested in community building can be said to be proportional, as the team has proven its willingness and ability to attract enough collaborators.

After the initial announcement of LFG rules, 20 project applications were submitted on the Jupiter forum to participate in the first LFG election, and new project applications continued to emerge. Countless meme communities shouted PPP, viewing Jupiter as a "revolutionary." Whether from social media interaction to DAO voting, or from participating in LFG to advocating for PPP, Jupiter has attracted countless active users in nearly every initiative, but does high enthusiasm really mean strong consensus?

Why Are You Voting?

The winning project of the first phase, Zeus Network, officially launched on the Jupiter LFG Launchpad on April 4, with a total token supply of 50 million, ultimately closing at a price of $0.776. Shortly after, OKX immediately listed ZEUS, with trading volume surpassing $100 million within 20 minutes of opening. However, the good times did not last long; just a week later, ZEUS could not withstand market selling pressure, plummeting to $0.185, a tenfold drop from its opening price.

The day after ZEUS's crash, the second round of LFG voting began. The market did not leave retail investors much time to react; people rushed to the next project like they were investing in meme coins, pouring all their enthusiasm into the second round of voting.

The winning project of the second phase, Sanctum, frequently connected with the Jupiter team in the early stages of the campaign, and related videos uploaded to Jupiter's official YouTube garnered thousands of views and received substantial support from KOLs. Not only did it attract over 230 million votes in the election, becoming the proposal with the highest vote count in LFG, but Sanctum also secured 64% of the votes in this proposal, while the first-place candidates in the first and third phases of LFG did not exceed 60% support.

From left to right are the results of the first, second, and third LFG proposals.

However, Sanctum fell into a crisis of airdrop public opinion as a result. On July 16, Sanctum officially opened the airdrop claim inquiry window. In its established airdrop rules, the team selected 2,000 "sincere contributors" to allocate 50 million tokens through active review. These so-called "sincere contributors" refer to users who promoted Sanctum on social media, which inevitably left "score players" who invested real money feeling dissatisfied.

The project was chosen by the community, but ultimately faced a bad outcome, which seems to indicate that consensus had not formed. The original intention of Jupiter launching the Launchpad was to hope that projects could synergize with the Jupiter ecosystem and Solana, which should not only be the development direction of the project but also one of the decision-making factors for community members when choosing to launch projects.

LFG project application format, image source: Jupiter forum.

However, for community members, participating in LFG voting feels like participating in an investment; if a project performs poorly, it means an investment failure, so they tend to favor unique projects with good advantages during voting.

Insiders told BlockBeats that projects winning LFG have good participation, meaning a large number of users are using their protocols. "Personally, I vote for projects that can maximize my benefits." For him, projects he has used before or wants to use are more likely to gain his attention, "because launching through LFG gives a good boost to the project itself (and its valuation), and I will also receive airdrops from the project."

Additionally, comparing projects competing at the same time, the winning projects Zeus and Sanctum both have strong financing backgrounds. Crypto Weituo explained to BlockBeats, "Retail voting logic is influenced by VCs and CEXs, believing that only grand narratives backed by VCs have a chance to be listed on major exchanges."

Zeus announced in early April this year that it completed $8 million in financing at a valuation of $100 million, with investors including Mechanism Capital, OKX Ventures, Animoca Ventures, and The Spartan Group, among others. Angel investors, including Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko, Stacks co-founder Muneeb Ali, and Mechanism Capital founder Andrew Kang, also participated in this round of financing.

Similarly, as a winner, on April 4, Sanctum announced the completion of seed round expansion financing, led by Dragonfly, with participation from THE CMS, DeFiance Capital, Genblock Capital, Jump Crypto, and Solana Ventures, among others. Additionally, angel investors from projects like LayerZero Labs and Drift Protocol also participated in this round of financing, with a total financing amount reaching $6.1 million.

In contrast, among their competing projects, the top-ranking NFT lending protocol Sharky.fi and NFT liquidity protocol Banx also have financing backgrounds, but the investors and financing amounts are far less than Zeus. Sharky.fi has only Token Ventures as an investor, with the financing amount and date unknown, while Banx completed $1 million in seed round financing in 2022, and DePIN infrastructure Uprock, clean energy network Srcful, and MonkeyDEX have no relevant financing records.

Image source: rootdata.

So, if all candidate projects lack VC backing, what would be the selection criteria for retail investors? Crypto Weituo cited the investment logic of meme coins to explain this issue. Meme coins themselves are unbacked cryptocurrencies, and their trading volumes are much larger than VC coins, but when they are placed together with VC coins for voting on the Launchpad, it becomes impossible for everyone to make a judgment.

"This is the paradox of the Launchpad model," Crypto Weituo believes. Not only Jupiter, but also Launchpad platforms like DaoMaker and Seedify are essentially no different, as they all cancel on-chain indicators without reducing risk exposure.

Moreover, because Jupiter emphasizes fairness and deliberately downplays the bribery factors in voting, all users staking JUP (at least 50) can participate in voting, with one wallet allowed to select only one project, and 1 JUP represents one voting right. In this regard, Feng Wuxiang stated, "This makes voting a mere formality."

There's Trust

At the end of July, Jupiter launched a new meme Launch—CAT Launch Mechanisms, announcing the first Launch project ASIANMOM.

When ZachXBT pointed out that partner Irene Zhao had participated in fraudulent projects multiple times, Jupiter undoubtedly became the center of public opinion, with discussions around Irene and Jupiter only increasing. ALL IN CLUB promptly held a space, attracting over 1,300 online listeners, and even Irene made an appearance, but the community's consensus did not seem to strengthen due to the heat.

Not only did the Chinese community criticize Irene, but the English-speaking community also eagerly demanded an explanation from Jupiter.

That night during the space, Jupiter's response in the 22nd Planetary Meeting was "trust." Meow stated, "When you lack trust, PVP occurs, but when you have trust, PPP occurs." Irene also explained to BlockBeats that the meme Launch mechanism is very complex and requires long-term commitment, such as long-term locking, thus needing a lot of time, energy, and community interaction. It is evident that Jupiter currently still regards "faith" as the main means to promote PPP.

If the community's trust in PPP previously stemmed from Jupiter's leading position in Solana, then the trust guarantee for ASIANMOM can only rely on transparency. Just as Jupiter responded to the community's and ZachXBT's doubts, Irene also repeatedly stated in the space, "All token supply distributions will be very open and transparent."

Jupiter's transparency is evident to the community, but the flow of funds from the projects Irene has participated in over the past three years remains unknown, which seems to be at odds with the word "transparency." Although Irene stated that she would have an 18-month token lock-up period in the ASIANMOM project, which would be completely transparent and traceable, the seeds of doubt have already been sown, making it difficult for the community to pretend not to care.

In fact, Jupiter has never concealed its desire to bring memes to the Launchpad; as long as the meme is good enough, it can still apply to launch LFG. However, all projects submitting LFG applications are old concepts like GameFi, NFT, DeFi, and infrastructure. Therefore, Jupiter personally stepped in to launch meme Launch and promote the PPP experiment. Irene also stated in the space that the cooperation with Jupiter had long been confirmed, and the previously released PPP experiment content was the result of discussions between both parties.

LFG Launchpad notes, image source: Jupiter forum.

The day after ASIANMOM's crash, Meow connected with MOTHER founder Iggy for a live stream lasting over two hours. In this conversation, Meow emphasized the importance of building trust and recognition in the Web 2 world. Perhaps what Jupiter values is Irene's shared experience in both Web2 and Web3.

Before entering the Web3 industry, Irene had been a well-known influencer on Instagram for a long time. After crossing over to Konomi, she shaped her brand image as CMO, accumulating enough Web3 heat and followers in just six months. Irene explained to BlockBeats, "At that time, the Telegram sticker pack based on IreneDAO had over 1,000 downloads in three days, all from native Web3 Telegram users, and many industry bigwigs were paying attention."

The left image is Meow's YouTube live stream with Iggy, and the right image is the IreneDAO sticker pack on Telegram.

Irene emphasized in the space that the main reason for this cooperation is that Meow likes the Asian mom narrative. After seeing MOTHER, Meow, as a Chinese, hopes that Asia can also have its own "mom." In Meow's view, the "mom" narrative is not just a meme; it symbolizes a continuously spreading cultural unit.

Meow also talked about how memes with a "mom" narrative in popular culture increase the visual appeal and memorability of the meme, believing that this narrative symbolizes a perfect storm of emotional connection, polarization, and cultural understanding, making it an efficient and lasting meme. Therefore, with a foundation in the Asian mom community, Irene naturally became a target for cooperation with Jupiter.

However, regardless of the reason, this cooperation felt like a raid for the community. Due to the lack of strong consensus, the trust and faith accumulated by the community seemed to collapse the moment ZachXBT released evidence.

Although Irene told BlockBeats that to ensure ASIANMOM's success, she and Jupiter's Launchpad, Uplink, and airdrop teams have been discussing how to implement the Launch, with most teams participating in designing the Launch mechanism, Irene's previous experiences inevitably make community members doubt her capabilities and ability to lead.

Moreover, currently, Jupiter has not made any substantial progress besides promoting "trust." Therefore, when asked whether he is optimistic about the prospects of PPP, Feng Wuxiang stated, "Meme is PVP; Meow is not a savior and cannot change anything."

The Best Alternative

"Like JUP, avoid Launch," this may be the highest praise the community has for Jupiter after frequent Launch failures. It also indirectly indicates that although high community enthusiasm has not brought strong consensus to Jupiter, it does not mean that capturing attention economics is a wrong decision.

In this cycle, DeFi's overall performance has been poor. According to Dune data, DEX daily trading volume reached $4.26 billion, with Uniswap accounting for half. However, according to DeFiLlama data, Uniswap's trading volume has been in a long-term stagnation since the beginning of this year, with no significant growth signs. Therefore, DEX must pay attention to the attention market, and LFG Launchpad and meme Launch are indispensable steps. The open and transparent LFG Launchpad can attract native traffic from Web3, while the meme Launch in cooperation with Irene can capture the market potential of Web2.

The left image shows the market share of DEX trading volume, and the right image shows the changes in Uniswap's TVL and trading volume in 2024.

The stagnation of DeFi development will reflect in the altcoin market. According to Binance research, the MC/FDV of altcoins in 2024 is only 12.3%, the lowest in nearly three years. Therefore, when asked about the poor performance of the Launchpad, Feng Wuxiang explained to BlockBeats, "In addition to the projects themselves being concerning, this may also be related to the altcoin market."

Feng Wuxiang believes, "The last bull market saw the emergence of new narratives like the metaverse, NFTs, and GameFi. Most altcoin projects could rise as long as their concepts aligned with hot topics, while in this cycle, 99% of altcoin projects peaked at launch, with no real standout projects except for memes on Solana."

Also, due to the increasing frequency of meme trends, TGBot, which provides functions like copy trading, data analysis, and cross-chain assets, further suppressed the DEX market. According to Dune data, Banana Gun achieved a trading volume of $5 billion during the meme craze, with current trading volume exceeding $5.6 billion, averaging over $23 million in daily trading volume.

In just one year, the Banana Gun protocol's revenue has surpassed that of MetaMask, Curve Finance, and Raydium. Its ability to attract millions of dollars even caught Binance's attention, launching BANANA on its seventh anniversary as the first HODLer Airdrops project.

In comparison to the DEX track, Solana DEX seems to show some improvement. According to Defillama data, in July, DEX trading volume on Solana reached $55.876 billion, while Ethereum DEX trading volume during the same period was $53.867 billion, indicating that Solana's DEX monthly trading volume has historically surpassed Ethereum for the first time.

However, as the leading platform on Solana, Jupiter has long been in a state of being drained by Raydium. Dune data shows that most DeFi players on Solana are concentrated on Raydium. Although pump.fun has been seizing Solana's user market since its inception, it has had a relatively small impact compared to another project of the Jupiter team, Meteora.

The left image ranks public chains by DEX trading volume, and the right image shows the total number of users across different DeFi protocols on Solana.

Moreover, according to Messari's second-quarter ecological report on Solana, Raydium became the main beneficiary of pump.fun, with its daily trading volume increasing by 77% month-on-month, reaching $867 million, and its TVL reaching $991 million, making it the DeFi protocol with the highest TVL on Solana. In contrast, although Jupiter remains a major trading source on Solana, accounting for 51% of DEX trading volume, its market share was surpassed by Raydium by the end of the quarter.

With TGBot seizing market share and DEX competition intensifying, Jupiter is willing to "sacrifice its feathers" to attract long-term players and funds, and stepping outside the circle is also a methodology.

From the legendary story of pizza and Bitcoin to the emergence of Ethereum and Elon Musk promoting Dogecoin, each cycle has its unique narrative for stepping outside the circle. This round features a Bitcoin bull market driven by ETFs outside the circle and a meme bull market led by Solana inside the circle. The entry of celebrities into memes may be the opportunity Jupiter is seizing.

In conversations with Iggy, Meow firmly expressed the desire to become the first true Alpha. In his view, only by becoming the first to prove a celebrity project and achieve long-term success can one be considered a true Alpha. Introducing celebrities, creating launch platforms, and brand collaborations are crucial for enhancing visibility and revenue. Jupiter hopes to create a roadmap that guides and enhances the recognition of specific tokens through cooperation and merchandise.

This is essentially a competition for attention in the market. However, Irene does not believe that now is a good time for Web2 celebrities to enter. She explained to BlockBeats, "Currently, Web3 is mainly composed of on-chain players who are not very willing to pay for Web2 celebrities."

Moreover, for Web2 celebrities to succeed in launching projects, they must have a certain level of recognition in Web3. "It's not just anyone can post a selfie NFT and become popular," Irene added, "They tried to replicate IreneDAO but failed because they didn't understand the mechanics of memes and Web3."

When asked whether she would promote PPP in Web2 communities, Irene stated, "Web2 communities are still unaware of PVP, so discussing PPP might be premature." Additionally, "Most Web2 celebrities are still driven by the profit motive and are not genuinely interested in this industry."

However, Jupiter's focus on attention economics will not change, and it will continue to greedily seek every opportunity and capture every potential "believer." As Meow said, "Most of the best entrepreneurs, politicians, and influencers are masters of hype because you need enough attention to take action."