From JUPnary to infinity

After one of the largest token launches in crypto history Jupiter Exchange is now deploying their long term strategy for the $JUP token: Grow the pie.
You can find all the details at: https://station.jup.ag/



An integral part of this is the Jupiter DAO and the LFG Launchpad.
https://vote.jup.ag/


The first round of voting has started so if you haven't yet locked some $JUP and voted, do so ASAP! It is these kind of projects that will see crypto succeed long term.

https://vote.jup.ag/proposal/6txWyf3guJrhnNJXcAHxnV2oVxBcvebuSbfYsgB3yUKc



Before we dive into the candidates for this first round of voting I want to give a plug for Jupiter Research. It's a great place to learn about new projects and engage in an ecosystem which is only just starting. You may not get this opportunity again in your lifetime to be this early to something.
https://www.jupresear.ch/

The first round LFG candidates

It's time to vote on the short list for which projects will use the LFG launchpad. Highly recommending digging into each project (and the ones that didn't make the short list).
https://www.jupresear.ch/t/round-1-of-lfg-voting/8455

Below are my own (somewhat hot) takes on each of them.

Introducing UpRock! DePin for AI - Share your idle internet and earn $UPT

Yet another app wanting to put your idle compute power to use for AI.
I get the appeal, it's the idle game thesis, but the hard bit is coordinating many unreliable threads into a useful resource. That's very hard to do. It's the reason large compute resources are still centralised.

https://www.jupresear.ch/t/introducing-uprock-depin-for-ai-share-your-idle-internet-and-earn-upt/5338

Banx.gg P2P Perpetual NFT Loans - $BANX

NFT lending only with a perps focus (think what Tensor have launched where you can long/short NFTs).

I like BANKZ, but I'm not convinced by the perps model applied to NFTs, not in it's current state on here or on Tensor, there's too much risk, not enough reward. But I like where this is heading. Lending is risky and you need to control for that, not remove it, in order to build interesting things.
https://www.jupresear.ch/t/banx-gg-p2p-perpetual-nft-loans-banx/5340

Srcful - Decentralized Virtual Power Plant

Srcful - almost voted for this one. The long term goal is wild: A decentralised power station.
The short term is a sensible step in that direction: Token incentivised data feeds from solar and battery home installations.
Hope LFG gets more of these types of projects in the following rounds.
https://www.jupresear.ch/t/srcful-decentralized-virtual-power-plant/5346

Sharky shark — #1 NFT-lending protocol

I voted for Sharky, an NFT lending protocol. Boring choice in some ways as they're an established (and successful) team on Solana. But this sort of lending is the future.

Defi lending, as it is, is very rigid and doesn't scale to the kinds of products most people need.
The core problem NFT lending solves for does.
I consider them to be one of the dark horses in Solana along with a number of the DePIN projects.
https://www.jupresear.ch/t/sharky-1-nft-lending-protocol-shark-application-for-lfg/5440

LFG Launchpad Introduction: Bitcoin <> Zeus Network <> Solana

Another wrapped BTC ...
This is a nothing burger wrapped in hype. They're going to wrap BTC and lend it out. It's not native yield, it's just lending out wrapped BTC.

Threshold Network (tBTC), Interlay (iBTC) and the upcoming Stacks (the upcoming sBTC) are all examples of people trying to do nearly permissionless BTC on another chain via some communication layer.
It's hard. It takes a lot of money and time to do and it's unclear if people actually want it.

We've had iBTC and various wrapped BTCs for ages. We've even had tBTC for on Solana for a while now.

Nothing has ever really caught fire in the way even a reasonably sized memecoin has.
I like the idea that things like this, tBTC, sBTC etc.. have as I think it's ultimately what we'll use to tokenise assets. But BTC is not an asset in want of any innovation from it's holders. They're fine where they are (hence why Ordinals are popular: They're on the L1).
https://www.jupresear.ch/t/lfg-launchpad-introduction-bitcoin-zeus-network-solana/5357

LFG Launchpad Introduction - Monkey Dex / Monkey Gold $MOGO

A Memecoin for a copy trader platform that's cross chain.

It just feels like a lot of things mashed together because they're top of mind right now. DEX? Check. Memecoin? Check. Multi chain? Check. Influencer traders? Check.
None are bad ideas by themselves but I don't understand why smashing them together like this makes sense.

I'd love to see this not succeed but the team pivot to something else. As much as I'm not sold on this I like how it's been put together. A lot of the design, research and reasoning is pretty spot on I think, even if it's the wrong vehicle (IMO) to take this to market in. A few more iterations on product-market-fit and I think they'll have something much better.
https://www.jupresear.ch/t/lfg-launchpad-introduction-monkey-dex-monkey-gold-mogo/5515

These are my opinions: What are yours?

Like I said at the start of the post these are my takes on the candidates. I think they've all done a great job getting to this stage. That some just don't resonate with me personally doesn't at all take away from the fact that they've put in the effort to make it this far.

Who are you voting for and why?
What do you think of the field of contenders?

Let me know in the comments!


Let's go space cats!