The seven-year-old Ethereum-based protocol named Jupiter experienced a significant surge in its token price due to an airdrop from the Solana-based exchange aggregator Jupiter. The Ethereum-based JUP token saw a price increase from $0.005 on January 30 to $0.026 on January 31, right before the Solana-based Jupiter initiated a $700 million airdrop. However, the token's price quickly dropped to its current level of $0.007. The Ethereum-based Jupiter protocol, launched in 2017, was designed to create and host decentralized applications (DApps), but its official website states that the protocol is no longer active.
Solana-based Jupiter, in contrast, serves as a decentralized exchange aggregator allowing users to swap tokens, place limit orders, and employ dollar-cost averaging buying strategies on the Solana network. The airdrop by Solana-based Jupiter, considered one of the largest on Solana, generated a frenzy of claims. Austin Federa, director of strategy at the Solana Foundation, mentioned that the Solana network handled 2.5 million non-voting transactions in the first two and a half hours of the airdrop, with a joking reference to gas fees reaching an "astronomical figure" of 0.01 SOL, equivalent to around $1.02 at current prices.
Federa compared this to the high gas fees on the Ethereum network during popular airdrops, citing the ApeCoin airdrop where users had to pay $3,500 in gas fees to claim their tokens. However, third-party applications like Phantom Wallet and Solflare encountered user complaints during the airdrop event. Federa clarified that the issues were related to the remote procedure call (RPC) node, the interface between user wallets and the network, rather than the core Solana layer. Despite the challenges, 41% of eligible wallets received JUP tokens, and a 17-year-old cryptocurrency investor, codenamed "X," claims to have made over $1 million from Solana's JUP airdrop.
The Solana Foundation's Federa highlighted the network's solid performance, with the RPC layer remaining mostly unaffected by the influx of user activity during the airdrop. Validators continued to produce blocks in the network as expected. The airdrop's statistics show that among all eligible wallets, 57% of the total airdrop amount, or 566 million JUPs, have been received since the event went live on January 31 at 10:00 a.m. ET, according to data from Dune analysis.
