Jupiter is on the horizon-with the JUP token launching via airdrop at midnight tonight, 31 January at 03:00 pm UTC.

This article focuses on the main questions of the JUP airdrop as we count down the hours. Let's start with the basics! Jupiter is Solana's primary DEX aggregator.

Jupiter looks like Solana's DeFi interface service, responsible for more than 75% of the trading volume.

Jupiter is popular because it offers the best prices. It does this by collating all of Solana's major DEXs and using sophisticated order routing algorithms to ensure best execution.

Before Jupiter, the team managed Mercurial Finance, a Curve-style DEX and lending protocol in Solana. But, after $800,000 worth of $MERC tokens were stolen in the FTX hack, the team shifted focus to Jupiter and Meteora.

As it turned out, this switch was a genius decision. By competing at the aggregator layer, Jupiter has avoided the cutthroat DEX competition, which leads to premature token launches fuelled by "greedy eye" liquidity. While most of Solana's first wave of DEXs died out, Jupiter grew into one of the most popular protocols in all of crypto.

Jupiter is now ready to launch its tokens with a strong market match, and the impetus of the upcoming bull market. This is the opposite of 2021's tokens, which were rushed into a bubble market, chasing the SOL price to the moon.

Jupiter the Giant

Jupiter is huge, offering five products: swap, perpetual, DCA, bridge, and limit orders.

Swaps are Jupiter's original product. In recent weeks, the average weekly volume of swaps on Jupiter was over $3.5 billion. Jupiter's second largest product is Perpetual, which is its newest product. With over $80 million in assets under management, $47 million in open contracts, and 11,000 traders, it has become one of the major perpetual platforms on Solana.

The third product that I love is DCA (Dollar Cost Averaging). Think of it like regular instalments over a period of time. Want to buy some low liquidity micin tokens? This product is made for you. Jupiter's DCA helps make buying or selling crypto assets easy. This DCA allows settings such as "buy/sell every [so many] minutes".

This DCA product has been favoured by many whales and DeFi Solana users. And preliminary data indicates that this group is using the DCA feature to enter and exit large positions. For example, almost half of all Jupiter DCA users trade positions of more than $1,000 in size.

Jupiter's fourth product is the Bridge aggregator. As the name suggests, Jupiter compares the best rates between blockchain bridges and helps get best execution. Asset bridging is a product that Jupiter is well suited to, thanks to the user trust it has built through its first feature, Swap.

The fifth and final product discussed here is Limit Orders. This is Jupiter's smallest product by trading volume. And similar to DCA, limit orders are aimed at the more "sophisticated" person looking for best execution. In general, this feature demonstrates that Jupiter is not content to cater to retail only, and is ambitious to expand its products.

WIF/USDC Cumulative Open Order in Jupiter

While we're on the topic of integration, we should mention Meteora. Currently, Jupiter is only an aggregator; it does not "own" its own liquidity. And according to crypto history, any DEX that fails to attract its own liquidity will suffer. Just look at the comparison between TVL Uniswap versus 1inch-the difference is like night and morning. Liquidity is the key.

Currently, Jupiter wins as Solana's DeFi interface. Tomorrow, Jupiter wants to have its own liquidity with Meteora. Jupiter is slowly working on its infrastructure-and liquidity is a fundamental layer.

So, if Meteora can attract "sticky" liquidity, the market may be able to value JUP with Uniswap valuation rather than 1inch valuation.

Now, let's close with the launch of the $JUP token!

Airdrop & JUP Price

The question for tonight is: "How much will JUP cost at launch? And how much is the airdrop worth that we get?"

To try to answer this, we need to assume a bit. Firstly, we start with the information we already know.

Here are the important numbers:

• 10 billion JUP (maximum supply)
• 50% to the team - 50% to the community
• 4 airdrop rounds (once every January)
• 20% team allocation (1-year cliff and 2-year vesting)
• 20% strategic reserve (cliff and vesting unclear)
• 1.35 billion JUP in initial circulation

- 1 billion for airdrop
- 250 million for launchpool
- 50 million loan to CEX bookmaker
- 50 million for direct LP usage

The numbers above are important because they give an idea of the potential selling pressure.

In a CEX, exchanges should prepare for the worst-case selling pressure scenario before listing tokens. This is to ensure sufficient liquidity in their order books. In our internal estimation, we can consider all positive liquid tokens (above the entry point/capital) as potential selling pressure.

With this in mind, here is the $JUP liquid allocation that could potentially become selling pressure later tonight:

• 1 billion for airdrop
• 250 million for launchpool
• 50 million loan to CEX bookmaker
• 50 million for direct LP usage
• TOTAL: 1.35 billion $JUP tokens

The 250 million JUP earmarked for the launchpool ranged between 42c and 69c. As the chart below shows, it took $130 million of buying pressure-no external factors-to push JUP above $0.69.

The good news is that there is no additional selling pressure until January 2025. The team's cliff schedule is 1-year, and the next airdrop is expected in January next year. This should be a reassurance that there is no 'dumping' of unlock tokens. Also, the next three airdrop rounds can be strongly incentivised as long as people accumulate points for JUP token qualification. Without external factors, doing a gradual airdrop is a good move to support the token price, rather than a slow unlock.

If the total supply in circulation later tonight is 1.35 billion JUP, we need to assume the opening price of JUP. There are several ways. We can look at JUP trading on 'pre-markets' like Aevo.

On Aevo, JUP trades between 40 and 60 cents. Its ATH is 85c; its ATL is 8c; and its price at the time of writing is 67c.

This is how the reference value of the number of airdrops obtained according to price movements on Aevo.

My expectation is that JUP will start trading near its final price in the Aevo pre-market of around 70 cents, before moving closer to $1. If JUP hits $1, its market cap will rise to $1.35 billion, making it a top-60 token on CoinGecko. Higher than Aave, Osmosis, and Synthetix!

At $1, Jupiter's $10 billion FDV makes it the highest-valued app, and a top-20 asset in all of crypto-equivalent to Filecoin and Tron.

As you can see from the comparison, $1 is heavy territory. The crypto industry is constantly launching crazy valuation tokens, but I think anything above $1 is overvalued, at least in the short term. Another factor working against JUP is the token's price performance pattern compared to its base L1 coin. The price performance of UNI vs. ETH last cycle is probably the best illustration.

In September 2020, the UNI airdrop was one of the most anticipated token launches. And while UNI had a great run in the early months of 2021, it ultimately lost out against ETH for the duration of the bull market.

We also witnessed a similar scenario with 1INCH after its airdrop.

So, it is highly likely that we witness similar dynamics with JUP and SOL this cycle.

Conclusion of Opinion

To conclude, let's try to break down the arguments for each bullish and bearish case after the JUP token launch!

Bullish Scenario:

• JUP is a symbol of DeFi Solana
• Jupiter = 1inch, Uniswap, and dYdX combined
• There are still not many Solana tokens, JUP is the big altcoin in this ecosystem
• No token unlock for 1 year, no additional selling pressure (short term) Next 3 JUP airdrops incentivise to use the product
• JUP token distribution is better than JTO, easing selling pressure
• JUP is an "index" game token memes (mockJUP, WEN)
• JUP is Solana's most anticipated airdrop-so hype drive
• JUP will be instantly listed by CEX like Binance, OKX, Bybit, Kucoin, etc.
• Jupiter is massively marketing JUP tokens to its product users

Bearish Scenario:

• Jupiter will have no revenue until the number of users "increases 10x"
• Market Cap $2M and FDV $10M are too high numbers for a DeFi app
• People will sell JUP and rotate to SOL, memes tokens, or NFTs
• Solana stablecoin inflows are slowing down, so the buying pressure is small
• JTO flew at the beginning, but now the price is below the opening point
• JUP is not attracting the same FOMO as JTO yesterday
• SOL is not flying like it did at the JTO token launch

And with that, I hope you can enjoy Jupuary and good luck with the JUP airdrop!

This is the closest photo ever taken. The planet Jupiter is mostly made up of hydrogen and helium, and has no solid surface