Jupiter Finally Sets a Date for JUP Airdrop, Teases Meme Coin Drop on Solana

Solana-based decentralized finance (DeFi) aggregator Jupiter has officially penciled in a launch date and time for its hotly anticipated token airdrop—and will also use its platform to launch a new meme coin before then.

The drop—which is set to deliver one billion freshly minted JUP tokens into the wallets of Solana DeFi users—will commence on January 31 at 10:00 am EST, according to an announcement made Monday by Jupiter’s pseudonymous founder, Meow. 

Almost a million crypto wallets are eligible to receive funds through the airdrop, according to Jupiter. The platform released a tool last month that allows DeFi users to check how much JUP they stand to receive once the airdrop goes live. 

The bulk of a user’s JUP airdrop allocation is determined by factors including their trading volume on Jupiter and the consistency of their use of the site. All Jupiter users will receive at least 200 JUP, and those who either held $10 worth of assets on the platform or made at least 10 transactions prior to March 2o22 will receive a further 500 JUP.

Jupiter is one of the largest DeFi projects built on Solana. As a swap aggregator, the platform advises users on the best rates when trading tokens. 

Jupiter’s debut airdrop at the end of this month constitutes only the first phase of an extended giveaway roadmap. The project says it will roll out three additional community airdrops—each consisting of 1 billion JUP—at later dates to be announced.

Another 1 billion tokens will be reserved for community contributors and grants.  

All told, that’s 5 billion JUP—half of the total 10 billion JUP supply—that will be eventually distributed to the Jupiter community. The rest will be managed by the Jupiter team, with 2 billion JUP going to current team members, another 2 billion JUP serving as a strategic reserve, and 1 billion JUP set to act as a liquidity provision.

On Monday, Meow also announced that in preparation for the airdrop later this month, the Jupiter platform will launch a meme coin next week. The meme coin is not “by Jupiter,” Meow wrote, now will it be called MEOW—but Jupiter is using the launch as a “testing ground for our new launch platform,” they added.

They did not specify whether or not the meme coin would be airdropped in the same allocations as JUP is set to be distributed. Decrypt reached out to Jupiter regarding the meme coin but did not immediately receive a response.

Edited by Andrew Hayward