Jupiter Founder Brushes Off Airdrop Backlash: ‘People Don’t Understand Anything’

Jupiter’s pseudonymous founder Meow has heard the complaints about yesterday’s massive JUP airdrop on Solana, and he insists the critics have got it all wrong.

“You know what I realized, guys? How many people don’t understand anything,” Meow said today on Rug Radio’s live “FOMO Hour” about crypto influencers pushing back on the drop. “They only understand buy/sell.”

Solana decentralized exchange (DEX) aggregator Jupiter launched the biggest airdrop so far in 2024 on Wednesday, serving up 1 billion total JUP tokens to claim—over $700 million worth at the peak price yesterday. Solana’s network held up, JUP’s price popped, and nearly half a million wallets have already claimed their bags.

Still, there’s been backlash. Viral tweets have painted the airdrop as a token sale by Jupiter’s founders—an ICO in disguise. That’s because of a 250 million JUP launch liquidity pool established by the team using tokens pulled from the team’s half of the 10 billion JUP supply.

Meow—known for his essay-length tweets—has spent much of Thursday thus far responding to and repudiating what he claims is “FUD” around the airdrop, the purpose of the launch pool, and what happens to those tokens once the pool is closed.

According to Meow’s tweets and comments on the show, the 250 million JUP provided to the launch liquidity pool will be available for seven days from the launch for anyone to sell into. After that, Meow said that the tokens (JUP and USDC) will be withdrawn back into the team’s treasury or used to prop up other liquidity pools.

What’s more, the Jupiter founder says all this information was available for any would-be buyer to understand in the days leading up to the launch. All they had to do was read it before aping in, he says.

Meow elaborated in tweets that this type of approach, with a launch liquidity pool funded by the team amid the large-scale airdrop, is meant to benefit JUP holders. And if the team shows that the token has value, and the pool’s tokens are ultimately more valuable at the end of the seven-day period than at the start, then that’s a fair outcome in Meow’s view.

And for anyone who doesn’t like Jupiter’s approach or doesn’t feel like Meow’s explanation satisfies their concerns, he told the “FOMO Hour” team that they have an easy out while the launch pool remains active for six more days.

“I’ll tell people, you know—hate all you want for six days. You can always sell at this price, no matter how [big of a] dump it is. There’s always this pool ready for you to dump into right now.”