Datasets:

MasaFoundation

/

bankless_The_JUP_Airdrop_with_Jupiter_founder_Meow

like 0

Follow

Masa Foundation 7

Speaker A: Welcome to Bankless, where we explore the frontier of dexs on Solana. Today we're talking to Meow from the Jupiter project, which is perhaps the super Dex, the super exchange on Solana. We'll talk about what that is. Earlier this week, the Jup token, the highly hotly anticipated token out of Jupiter, has actually launched. This token was announced back at Solana breakpoint in November of last year, and it's been hotly anticipated ever since. It just came in at a $6 billion fully diluted valuation, which is equivalent to uniswap on Ethereum. So a very big launch. We got about $800 million of that actually circulating. So that is the actual market cap. And we're bringing on Meow, the founder. That is his pseudonym. Apparently it's very close to his actual real name, but people just call him Meow. He is a cat in a space suit on Twitter. We're bringing on Meow to talk about what is Jupiter, what is Jupiter under the hood? And then also the token launch. So this will, I think, be a hybrid episode for the ethereum community, which bankless, of course has, is the majority of the bankless audience who have never experienced Jupiter before, or maybe only touched it once or twice, have heard about it, but don't really know what it is. That would be, I would call the first part of the episode the first half, and then the second half of the episode is going to be more geared towards the Solana people who are interested in the details of the launch of Jup. There was a bit of controversy about the launch of Jup that I heard. I am not super tapped into these conversations, so I'm coming at a very high level. Meow will give his account an explanation of the mechanism for the Jup launch. He will give his side of the story. I do not have the capacity to give what might be the other side of the story, so you'll have to search for that elsewhere. Whatever Solana circles are discussing this, so there's a disclaimer there. I guess overall found it pretty fascinating. There are definitely some differences about what Jupiter is on Solana versus what the typical dex aggregator is on Ethereum. Meow walks through all of those things and then we also just get into the other conversations like the load on the Solana network. What's next for the Jupiter team with the liquidity that they have sourced as a result of the token launch? And also what's next for Jupiter teaser? They are hiring if you are looking for a job. And now let's go ahead and get right into the conversation with Meow from Jupiter. But first, a moment to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make this show possible.

Speaker B: Banklessation.

Speaker A: I'm here with the founder of Jupiter named Meow. Meow, welcome to the show.

Speaker B: Hey, how's it going?

Speaker A: Nice to meet you, meow. So you just had a gargantuan token launch. A $6 billion app just launched a token coming in at $6 billion. Diluted value. Yeah. New value into the world. Congrats on that. How does it feel to be post launch.

Speaker B: Man? Thanks for asking. No, nobody asked you that yet. No, no, seriously, thanks for asking, because no one has really asked me yet.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: So thanks a lot for asking. We know that the team has worked really hard, right? And certainly the funny thing is that we do control the value. We don't. In fact, if you ask me and stuff, it's like, okay, it's like the market gave us this value. Then on our end, I think we're incredibly lucky, unfortunately, to be a recipient of this value. And I think it is, on one hand, like, okay, we are grateful that things didn't mess up. We're extremely grateful that, I mean, we were able to give a present, right. To a lot of people, you know?

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: I mean, lots of people are like, I mean, obviously, I wish they kept their joke, right? But lots of people like, hey, I could pay for my meal. Hey, I could buy. I could finally buy my iPhone, right? And I feel like, I feel like that kind of. I mean, obviously we hear a lot about, like, no, they're playing a gaming system and getting lots of, like, lots of capital, but there's all these, like, you know, many small stories, right. You know, and that's pretty happy for me. So I think. I think it feels very grateful, you know? So I think on one hand, I think it's like, accumulation of a lot of work done. So we're very happy to do the do it manifest that, right. You know, also giving prize on people. And also. And last but not least, I think, I think, you know, I think it must beginning. You know, I think this whole process has been this, um, amazing community process, right? Because value is not generated by a team. If you're making a pencil, for example, maybe, but if you're making a coin, a currency or token, then the value is generated by community ecosystem. So that's not least, obviously, incredibly grateful to the community ecosystem for doing it for us.

Speaker A: I think Solana, as an ecosystem, is learning to how to do airdrops. We had the geodo drop. This is like the second big drop after Jito. There's been others as well, but really, these are kind of the two big ones. And so I'm. One of the things I've been curious about is just learning about how Solana app teams learn to navigate a very difficult process of beginning actually to decentralize their whole app. I want to get into that subject later. But as you probably know, and as listeners definitely know, this is more. We have a more of a Ethereum focus on bankless. We are familiar with Ethereum. We know how these systems work on Ethereum. So I want to unpack what Jupiter is under the hood for our more Ethereum centric audience. So the next bit of questions is, if I were to pop open the hood of Jupiter, what would I see? How is it different? And then I'll ask, how does Jupyter uniquely leverage Solana? But for people that don't know what Jupiter is or don't know what it is and haven't used it before, what is Jupiter? It's an exchange on Solana, but take it from there. If I were to look under the hood of Jupiter, what would I find?

Speaker B: Okay, if you don't look under the hood, just look at the car. We are a full service exchange. We have swap very limited orders with DCA. We have hubs, and we serve the gateway to Solana, onboarding to Solana. And we also have a launch pan, which is just launched. So that's what I see on the outside. And what you see on the inside is that you see this extremely meticulously designed, elaborately engineered over three or four years. Over two or three years system meant to find the best routes across the whole Solana network in a way that is as fast as possible, because as you guys know, Solana broadcast is 400 milliseconds. And also Solana transaction speed is very fast, and also transition fees are very much lower in many ways compared to other networks, whereby we had to find. We had to aggregate across all the markets and then also find routes, not just for larger trades, but also very small trades. So our goal is very simple. Whether you're doing a two cent trade or whether you're doing a $100 trade or million dollar trade, we want to kind of effectively kind of route through the system.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: In a much more effective way.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: And one big difference to Ethereum is this. So Ethereum's constraint is gas fee.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: We know that. So on, that has a different set of constraints.

Speaker C: Right?

Speaker B: It's like the account, the account size limit is smaller and different. So it's like basically how do we kind of like constantly navigate that? So how do we kind of like build a system that's extremely optimized, right. For like Solana's like, you know, speed and cost, but sometimes like, you know, handle its limitations, you know? Yeah. So, so that's kind of what we see. Um, or that. And, and that's the soft aggregation. So that sort aggregation powers a number of systems, right? It powers the, uh, it powers, um. It powers the soap, obviously. It powers the limit orders, it powers the DCA, you know, but also you also power certain key things about the, um, the perks as well.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: You know? Yeah. So, and, yeah, so I think a number of things. Yeah. So, so that's what's the end of it. Yeah.

Speaker A: On the surface, you have these different ways of swapping. You have the swaps, a limit order, dollar cost averaging and perps. These are all just ways to make a trade happen. And then under the hood you said that it's a Dex aggregator. We have Dex aggregators on Ethereum. They do exactly what you say. They find liquidity across Ethereum and then they package it into the best execution for their users. Is Jupiter a source of liquidity as well? Is it an amm, like uniswap as well? Or is it more just of a, an aggregator of liquidity? And it finds liquidity elsewhere on Solana. Where is the liquidity coming from?

Speaker B: So three different ways, right? The first way for the swap limit on this year. There's no liquidity for the purpose. We have liquidity. Actually, we actually have one of them. We actually have one of the most largest by volume in Defi. Our perks did about 1.4 billion in volume last week.

Speaker A: Okay, so Jupiter hosts its own liquidity for its purpose products.

Speaker B: Yes, precisely.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: You know? Yeah, precisely.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: And then, and then for Launchpad. And for Launchpad, we get, we source liquidity from teams.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: To host on the platform.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: You know, and then, and also, obviously we also host the airdrop as well.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: For people as well. Yeah. So, yeah, so, and I think I would say this, I think we are extremely so. And by the way, we really, I think one thing that I'm very proud of at Jupiter, right, is that we really push the limitation of Solana to a limit.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: For example, there are a few things that, for example, Solana in the past had this problem where transactions can only be so big when they send the transaction in. And they implemented lookout tables. So we're the first to implement lookout tables, we're the first to implement priority fees and first to implement. And basically anything that Solana does, we're the first to incorporate into our system. I think we are a really good example of composability. On Solana, you can basically go through like six or seven markets on Savannah for like transaction fee of like 0.00, $0.02, you know. Yeah. So I think that's actually one really, really cool thing, I think. Yeah. That we really focus on.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I definitely want to lean into that. But really just to round out the liquidity question, the swaps and the limit orders, where do those, where does Jupiter source its liquidity if it's not everywhere on Solana? So there's other like amms or other order limit orders on other apps and then Jupiter assigns them.

Speaker B: So that, so that's a few. There are actually a range of. It's actually interesting. It might be interesting for your audience, right. Because on Swanna you also have for example, you know, stick. Stick and sticking, right. So for example, if you, if you go, if you go from so. Right to stick. So liquid sticks, so. Oh yeah, sticking. Right. Liquid stick, so. Right, like judo soul or like all that marina.

Speaker C: Marinate.

Speaker B: So. Right, so, um, Jupyter also integrates something called sanctum, which essentially allows for immediate staking and unstaking. So on Jupiter, you can immediately go from a very large sole order to a very, very large to the very large liquid. So in the same transaction, so you rush through the Emms and cops and also that one thing. And so the way back to. Right, I think there are actually a number of really interesting and obviously clob is actually very proficient as well, but you don't really see them anywhere else. And actually integrating all these different systems at the Amms and Cob's and things that sanctum into one system, it's actually quite challenging. Also another thing, another kind of ams that you have on sauna is like a single sided liquidity pools. So basically, I think because the cost of so low, you do see a bigger variety of like, you know, possible liquidity systems they don't see elsewhere.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: Yeah. So I think that's actually something quite interesting. What Jupiter does, right, is that we actually spend an incredible amount of time and effort, right. Trying to. Okay, I'll put it in. We are aware the Amms take off their training rules, right. Because they build and build and build, but they're not sure what brakes, right. But the moment they plug in our system, that the first 2nd there is like hundreds of orders flooding in right. In the first minute.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: So I think sometimes they break. So we work with the team to really try to fix them and everything. And because a lot of these systems are very novel.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: You know, so they, so we work with them a lot. So under the hood. So if you look under, if you look at, if you look beyond under hood to the people working under the hood, right. I think you will see, you will see a team that is like very, very committed, you know? Right. And I mean, it's not me, by the way, it's the engineers.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: You know, like, they are very committed to making sure that the whole system works as well as possible.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: You know, that takes, that they really understand that every single detail about the amm, you know, and take how integrated everything.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: And we had the same amount and we had the same level of dedication to our products. Right. Order swaps and DCA and pubs, everything.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: So that's, that's. I think. I think that's what. Under the hood. Yeah. Okay.

Speaker A: So you were about to get into it, and then I wanted to go back and just, like, tie off that liquidity question. But I want to ask about how does Jupiter leverage Solana? Solana has unique properties that no other blockchain has. You know, it's extremely fast. It's got some parallelization to it. Uh, what are the strengths of Solana that Jupiter really leans into?

Speaker B: I I mean, the, the most obvious one is cost.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: You know, it's like, um. Like do, like it's cheap to execute a complicated trade on Solana, you know?

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: Um, it's very, it's more. Okay, so, so I will say. I would say this, right. It's like, besides the, um, besides the technical capital, right. There's also ecosystem. So Ana actually has a very, very well developed ecosystem. And so it's actually two things. So you have a lot of different kind of emms and with people who are investing real technical effort into designing new systems. For example, Phoenix is an extremely different system for open book, and open book v two is a very different system from Phoenix and a bunch of other open worlds coming as well. So you really have a lot of people who are investing a lot of time and effort into their own system, but obviously you don't have volume at the start of new system. So what we do is that we plug you in and immediately you get all the retail flow and everything we do that. I think to us, it's not just about leveraging the sauna, but also the ecosystem as well, which is very, very important.

Speaker A: One of the big stories about Jupiter was that there was no vc funding. It was bootstrapped just from you and from the team. Can you talk about the genesis of Jupiter? Like how. How did the idea get started? How did the project get started and when did it get started? Tell us about the Genesis story.

Speaker B: Sure. So actually, so actually, so let me go, let me go way back, right. So we started out as a. So actually I did a lot of stuff in Ethereum, right, as well.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker A: Pretty typical. Everyone, everyone generally has their start, you.

Speaker B: Know, like, and also I also started WTC, you know, when I was like working them with Bitgo and everything.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: So I was actually really active in Ethereum, you know, I just didn't talk that much. And anyway, any, anyway, anyway, we started a project called Mercurial.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: And then mercurial project started as well. And then that that project took funding. That project took funding.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: And then, and then over time, that ensured the project didn't do. Didn't do that well.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: You know, and didn't do well. And then eventually what happened was that, and what happened was that we started, we started, and from there we started Jupyter as a new project, as a completely new project, while Mercurial became Meteora. So now with a project called Mitora. So it's also doing extremely well as well. It's also doing extremely well right now. Basically, I think the genesis of Jupiter started as mercurial, which did take funding. Right. Which did take funding.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: And then it had a token as well.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: And then it transitioned. And then in about, and then in about February 2023, we took a snapshot.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: You know, and then we took a snapshot. And then now 5% of total drupe supply goes to mercurial stakeholders. Okay?

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: You know, while 100% of the circulating supply of mitorae goes to the mercy holders. Yeah. A snapshot taken in 2023. Yeah.

Speaker A: Okay. So there were, there were some other applications, some other startups that you started before Jupiter. Eventually you pivoted into Jupiter and then. Would you call it a pivot?

Speaker B: No, no, no. It's a new project. Yeah. But the original project became etora.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: You know? Yeah. So I mean, I mean, we documented all these things in exclusivating detail.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: In many different places, you know.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: But I think, I think eventually we were able to. It was actually, I don't get me wrong, it was a long process.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: But I think eventually we were able to come up with we were able to kind of like, I believe, and it's my personal belief.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: And certainly I think a lot of people appreciated it to create, I think, two projects, Jupiter Mitura.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: You know, that had a lot of value.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: You know, and we were able, I think we, I think when we. I think. And be able to find that value. Right. To the original mercy holders. Yeah.

Speaker A: Okay. Okay. All right. So where did the idea, the inspiration for Jupiter come from and how did the team form?