Jupiter (JUP)

Jupiter (JUP) is the governance token of Jupiter, the largest decentralized exchange aggregator on the Solana blockchain. Jupiter searches many trading venues at once to find the best available price for a token swap, and has grown into a wider trading platform offering perpetual futures, limit orders, lending, a token launchpad and its own stablecoin. JUP was launched on 31 January 2024 through one of the largest airdrops in crypto history.

Jupiter has no blockchain of its own. It is an application built on Solana (SOL), and JUP is a Solana token. The aggregator does not hold most of the liquidity it trades against: it routes orders through decentralized exchanges and automated market makers run by others. It was founded in 2021 by a pseudonymous developer known as Meow and by Siong Ong, and JUP holders vote through the Jupiter DAO.

Think of a flight comparison website. Instead of checking every airline one by one, a traveller types in a route and the site shows the cheapest combination, sometimes splitting the journey across two carriers. Jupiter does the same for crypto trades. Someone who wants to swap one token for another types in the amount, and Jupiter checks dozens of exchanges in a fraction of a second, sometimes splitting the trade across several of them to get a better overall price.

The user still trades from their own wallet, and the swap settles on Solana within seconds. JUP is not needed to make a trade. It works more like a membership vote in a cooperative: holders can lock it up to vote on how the platform spends its funds and runs its token programmes, and in return they have received rewards. Much of the token's value depends on how busy the platform is.

Jupiter launched in October 2021 and became the default swap engine for most Solana wallets and apps, surviving the collapse of the FTX exchange in 2022, which hit the Solana ecosystem hard. On 31 January 2024 it distributed 1 billion JUP to about 955,000 eligible wallets that had used the platform before a November 2023 snapshot, an airdrop valued at around $700 million at launch. A second airdrop of 700 million JUP followed in January 2025. At its "Catstanbul" event in Istanbul on 26 January 2025, Meow announced that 3 billion JUP would be burned and that half of protocol fees would be used to buy JUP back from the market. In June 2025 the team paused DAO voting until 2026 after criticism that team-held tokens could sway votes. In January 2026 Jupiter launched JupUSD, a stablecoin issued with Ethena Labs.

When a user requests a swap, Jupiter's routing engine compares prices across many liquidity pools and order books and calculates the path that returns the most tokens after fees and slippage. A trade from token A to token C might pass through token B, or be split so that 60 percent goes through one pool and 40 percent through another. The whole route executes in a single Solana transaction, so it either completes in full or fails without losing funds. Jupiter also routes trades in meme coins launched on platforms such as Pump.fun (PUMP), which has made it one of the busiest applications on the network.

JUP launched with a maximum supply of 10 billion tokens, split evenly between the team and the community. Team tokens are subject to a one-year cliff followed by three years of vesting, so regular token unlocks add to circulating supply. The January 2025 burn removed 30 percent of the maximum supply:

• $S_{\text{new}}$ is the maximum supply after the burn.
• $S_{\text{old}}$ is the maximum supply before the burn.
• $b$ is the share burned, written as a decimal.

With $S_{\text{old}} = 10{,}000{,}000{,}000$ and $b = 0.30$, the result is $S_{\text{new}} = 10{,}000{,}000{,}000 \times 0.70 = 7{,}000{,}000{,}000$ JUP. Tokens bought back with fees are held in a reserve the team calls the Litterbox, and Jupiter reports that about 134 million of those have also been burned, taking the maximum slightly below 7 billion.

• Governance. JUP holders lock tokens to vote in the Jupiter DAO and have earned Active Staking Rewards for voting.
• Launchpad access. Votes by JUP holders have helped choose which new projects launch through Jupiter's launchpad.
• Trading. JUP is traded on Solana exchanges and on major centralized exchanges.

Critics point to the share of tokens held by the team, which raised doubts about how independent DAO votes could be and led to the 2025 pause. Large airdrops and scheduled unlocks have added steady selling pressure, and JUP fell sharply in early 2025 despite the burn. Jupiter's position also depends on Solana's health and on decentralized finance activity, and in 2026 rival aggregators won a growing share of Solana trading volume.

• Jupiter
• Jupiter developer documentation