Original author: Meow, founder of Jupiter
Original translation: Luffy, Foresight News
One thing that being open and diverse has taught me is that figuring out what I want is the hardest thing to do, and also possibly the most important thing to do. Without that clarity, it’s easy for me to get sucked into endless pain and uncertainty with the people I care about most.
Likewise, I think the lack of clarity around Jupuary and Jupiter’s broader goals could cause a lot of friction between the stakeholders I care about most (i.e. the community, users, and of course the team).
Jupuary is an unprecedented event that requires voters to work together to make the pie bigger. If this is not communicated well, we will have big problems.
This article aims to explain clearly and in detail what we want to achieve with Jupiter, Jupuary and JUP, and to present a clear process for us to understand what everyone wants.
But first, a quick introduction to Jupiter.
Jupiters Fundamentals
Lets start with a simple statement that may have been overshadowed by the recent controversy and confusion surrounding Jupiter: Jupiter is in great shape.
Over the past three years, we have invested significantly to ensure our foundation is strong in all key areas (team, capital, token, community, idea).
On the team side, we have demonstrated our ability to consistently deliver a world-class platform: building the top aggregator in the crypto space, one of the largest decentralized exchanges ($140 billion in volume in less than 12 months), and pioneering a token launch platform based on a new liquidity model. We also continue to experiment with new products, such as Jup Mobile and ApePro, which have gained widespread acceptance just one month after launch.
In addition to being able to ship great products, I firmly believe we have one of the most cohesive and honest teams in crypto. Here’s a quick story:
When I realized the community was concerned about our high FDV, I proposed to the team to burn 30% of the total JUP supply. I was deeply moved to see that they unanimously agreed to burn a large portion of their share (600 million tokens), while also agreeing to lock their initial cliff and not sell most of their vested tokens.
You might find a lot of teams in the crypto space willing to do this, but our team agreed to it without hesitation because they really wanted to assure the community and each other that we are here to build.
Second, Jupiters financial fundamentals are very strong. We currently have approximately $150 million in assets in our coffers from our initial seed capital pool and a positive cash flow business comprised of multiple revenue streams.
We keep a tight rein on costs, which means we don’t need to sell any JUP to fund operations. A strong financial foundation allows us to think, act, and build aggressively for the future. This mindset is more akin to that of a fast-moving startup than a typical crypto project, where the focus is on building the best possible foundation for the long journey ahead, rather than exhausting potential early on.
Third, the JUP token is one of the most interesting experiments in governance. We give it actual power to decide the direction of the Jupiverse, not just symbolic power. The upcoming Jupuary vote is a prime example of this. We want to build long-term market trust in the token, and we have to earn it, which is why we do things like transparency audits and CAT contracts. The whole process is organic, unlike 99.9999% of the bullshit you see elsewhere, it really is what you see is what you get.
Fourth, we have one of the most active communities in crypto. We are the largest DAO in the world with over 260,000 unique voters. More importantly, we are the most engaged DAO in the world, and every vote inspires community discussion, which brings our community closer together. We have also pioneered an innovative distributed strategy execution model in decentralized working groups. Each working group works openly to benefit the community and has full accountability for the DAO. Together with the team, they play a key role in expanding and enriching Jupiverse.
Finally, and most importantly, our community is united behind key ideas and ethos on how to make the crypto ecosystem and even the world better: PPP (player pump player) has been adopted by dozens of communities around the world as a battle cry for improving the crypto experience. CAT (certainty, alignment, transparency) has focused the entire industry on building in the open, not in private. And J 4 J (Jup for Jup) has become a battle cry that brings community members together to contribute their time and talents in exchange for ownership of the protocol.
These five fundamentals: a talented and committed team, a strong financial position, a widely distributed governance token, a vibrant and thriving community, and the best ideas put us in a unique position to build the world we want to see.
Whats next?
We don’t want to be another DeFi protocol, nor do we want to follow the conventional script of how crypto projects should develop. We are also not interested in various arguments about fat wallets, fat protocols and fat layers, as well as traditional views on token economics.
We certainly read, learn, absorb, and adapt, but at our core we want to carve out our own path, find out what works for us at the moment, and do our best to achieve it.
We firmly believe that cryptocurrencies will support the worlds progress in the coming decades, including back-end infrastructure, value creation, and all user-facing financial tools.
We hope that Jupiter can become one of the key players in building critical infrastructure, establishing the concepts and spirit of the field, and promoting the development of decentralized systems.
To achieve this goal, we need the best team, the best platform, the best spirit, the best culture, the best ideas; and of course, we need the strongest community to achieve these goals.
This is where Jupuary comes in.
Jupuary’s role: acceleration, decentralization, unification
Looking back at the first Jupuary, we believe it was one of the best-executed and most extensive airdrops in the crypto space. Crucially, it ignited the hearts and minds of our community and brought together a large number of passionate and talented people.
By implementing it in a strategic way, Jupuary has great potential to attract the right talent into the ecosystem and accelerate community growth.
If done right, Jupuary will play three key roles in the advancement of the Jupiverse: acceleration, decentralization, and unification.
Jupuary accelerates community formation
Traditionally, people think of community as marketing for products. We think of products as marketing for communities, which is completely different.
We don’t like the idea of giving away tokens for using a product. We believe people should use a product because it’s useful, not because of tokens.
The goal of Jupuary is to invite people who are already familiar with Jupiter to become active participants in the community and the DAO.
We invite those who understand and value the Jupiter philosophy to join Jupuary, which greatly accelerates the formation of an active community who can see and understand our spirit and our efforts to build for the ecosystem, partners and users.
Jupuary is a massive decentralization event
Many major protocols release information to insiders, often quietly through multiple channels. Jupuary aims to disrupt this trend and do the exact opposite.
We chose to release information to the community in the most public way possible, even though it would cause more controversy, so that we could expand the community and unite the core members who embrace the spirit of Jupiter.
Jupuary is an event that unifies the community
Getting the entire community (especially a large one like Jupiter) to understand and evolve a project around a common vision is often extremely difficult.
Jupuary will be an important milestone for the community and the wider ecosystem to discuss, challenge, and align on the Jupiter vision, which will deepen their understanding of what we care about.
This is why voting is necessary. Jupuary will bring a ton of attention to the Jupiverse. It will bring energy from all parts of Solana. It will help get more community members, more suggestions (catdets), and more goodwill for the Jupiverse.
But only if we all agree on the best approach. This decision is too important for the future of Jupiter to be left to a few. Instead, we must find a way for the community to agree on how to grow the pie.
We are building Jupiter together, and during this critical period, we must come together and work together.
Jupuary voting procedure
Jupuarys goal is simple: to build a massively expanded, united community by 2025 to tackle Jupiters next phase together.
This vote will have a special threshold of 70% of votes in favor. The threshold is high because we need to unite the community and we will iterate on the proposal until we reach a result that we all agree on.
If we don’t reach the threshold on the first vote, that’s okay. We will take the feedback and work with the team to come up with an updated proposal, and will continue working on it until 70% of the community agrees.
This vote is about finding a way out, so it’s vital that you vote with your own honest decision: don’t say “yes” because you want to support it, and don’t say “no” because someone on Twitter criticizes you.
We are determined to find an outcome that the community is truly satisfied with, and this will take some time.
Outline for the first round of voting
For the first round of voting, we will start with a very simple question: Is the community willing to accept 2 more rounds of Jupuariy of 700 million JUP each?
Based on the feedback from the past few weeks, we have also determined the top-level design goals for the first Jupuary:
Our goal is to make the entire process as inclusive as possible by making every key step feel included.
Our goal is to attract real people and active users who are likely to understand our philosophy and participate in our growth journey. While quantity is certainly a consideration, it will not be the focus of this Jupuary.
There will be no lock-in or ownership. We need to end each Jupuary with a highly aligned and unified community, and we cannot tolerate people who fundamentally don’t want to be a part of it.
We will also be investing heavily in Sybil attack detection, enforcing higher minimum thresholds, requiring human proof before claiming, and more.
Additionally, we hope to have 2 more Jupuary events, as we believe that certainty for the community and the team is very important in the coming years.
Jupuary is about making the pie bigger rather than dividing the pie
Some people think that because they dont know the exact criteria for their vote, they cant vote. But I cant let voting degenerate into a pie-in-the-sky activity where people only vote for what they can get.
Jupuary is fundamentally a process of making the pie bigger, and voting must be based on fundamental principles. Each voter votes based on high-level direction, mutual trust, and trust in the team for the long-term collective good. The exact distribution will ultimately be decided by the team.
What happens after the vote?
If the vote passes, it means the community is happy with the proposal and the cryptocurrency space will witness the first time the community comes together to decide on a major expansion event. The team now needs to be able to plan ahead and execute the next two Jupuaries. This will significantly reduce the uncertainty faced by the community and allow Jupiter to execute its expansion plans.
If it doesnt pass, we will listen to your feedback, iterate on the proposal, and re-upload the vote. I will work tirelessly to get a result that satisfies the community. It may be tiring, but I truly believe it is a force for good.
If we cannot reach a clear agreement by the end of the year, the tokens will remain in the community multi-signature wallet and we will come up with a completely different proposal.
Remember, there is no right or wrong here, just vote on what you think will be good for the long term.
3 time points
When making these suggestions and plans, I took into account three time nodes: Castanpur 2025, Checkpoint 2027 and EOTD (End Of The Day).
1. Castanburg 2025
Castanburg 2025 will take place at the end of January and will be a major milestone for us, where we will gather the most important members of the Jupiverse to celebrate progress, discuss future plans, and of course, burn a cat.
I am determined to have a larger community by the end of Castanburg 2025 that is united, confident, and ready to tackle the new year together, no matter what price action may take. This is the main reason why I decided not to lock in the JUP allocated in this Jupuary. But the key risk is that we allow people to be “forced” to bet and vote, which is the worst possible outcome.
2. Checkpoint 2027
We have built a very solid foundation over the past three years, and I would like to ask the community to support us for another two years to lay the perfect foundation for realizing our vision for Jupiverse.
Over the next few years, I will work tirelessly with the team to create the best platform, business, and distribution to realize our vision of bringing everything together and bring our ideas and spirit to the forefront of world culture.
In addition, by then, both rounds of jupuary (if passed) will have been concluded, the current ASR will have been completed, and the core of the community will have been successfully formed.
During this period, we will also work on realizing the full potential of JUP as a meme and platform token. Of course, by then, our goal is to make JUP widely spread and trusted by millions of people.
This will be the perfect time for Jupiverse to assess where we are and plan for the next phase.
Finally, we fully support this strategy and we mean what we say. The Founders Team will not sell any JUP before this Checkpoint to ensure that we are fully committed to meeting any requests from the community.
3. End Of The Day
Back to the question I asked at the beginning: Who do I ultimately want to be? What am I doing all this for?
It is indeed a difficult job to do this publicly, constantly postpone your own achievements, and then painfully build all the key parts one by one and glue them together.
It took me a long, long time to get clear, but now it’s actually clear to me, and I want to make it clear so everyone knows exactly where I stand, and then they can make their own decisions.
Quite simply, I want us to be in the best position possible to work together to create the world we want to see. I have a lot of complaints about the current state of the cryptocurrency industry.
We keep saying cryptocurrencies are better, but are we really more transparent than banks, more accountable than governments, or more socially friendly than big monopolies?
We keep talking about acceleration, but in what direction are we accelerating?
Accelerating towards a world where it doesnt matter what you do as long as you can make money, whether its playing PVP games or making insiders rich, is not the world I want to accelerate towards.
But even if I disagree, I am also very pragmatic. In order to have a voice, Jupiter must be one of the key winners, Jupiverse must become a cultural force, and JUP must become the dominant token in the crypto world.
In order for JUP to achieve this goal, we need to do the following: become a symbol of transparency, record every JUP token issued from genesis, be supported by the most united community in the world, and become one of the most important platform tokens.
Will we get there instantly? Of course not. Will the journey be simple and straightforward? Of course not. Will it be a foolproof affair? Of course not.
But will we work together? Of course. Am I working towards this goal with everyone? Of course. Do I want to be on a big yacht with all my JUP buddies at some point? Of course.
Im going to work hard to achieve this goal, and whether I succeed or not, Im going to work hard to achieve it in public. Maybe this is the journey I want in the end.
