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 second round of voting starts soon 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.

Voters in the first round ended up getting a $ZEUS airdrop as part of their rewards!




Before we dive into the candidates for the second 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 second round LFG candidates

I'd previously written about the first round of candidates here https://www.bulbapp.io/p/7fa1bc19-e71f-4ebd-96e4-cc437cb6e5d8/lfg-launchpad-releases-its-first-round-of-candidates?s_id=dc0f5b49-9ac0-4ee2-ac10-0fb8935e6521

Many of the first round have been put up for the second round. Mostly nothing much as changed since the first round so I've left unedited from my original post but added updates where there's been meaningful developments.

For those brand new candidates I've marked them as (new).

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-2-of-lfg-voting/14241

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/5338/117

Update

There's been a lot more discussion around the security aspect of this service. Coming from cyber sec I have very serious concerns about anyone using a service like this (and also something like Grass). The attacks I see normally use services like this to cloak their traffic in legit looking IPs and devices (cause they are legit, they're piggy backing off your internet connection!).
Even more worrying was when I saw the project say they'd pay users to solve CAPTCHAs. My company uses CAPTCHAs in our defensive toolkit. Never once seen a CAPTCHA solver service be used for anything but fraud.

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/5346/13

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

(new) Nyan Heroes: A flagship AAA shooter on Solana

This is a web2 game, from experienced web2 developers, with web3 elements. And by elements I mean a token.
The token will be limited in use but... I'm actually quite impressed with how that's been designed.
They're going to use the token for marketplace transactions (will be abstracted for web2 players, you don't have to have a wallet to play) and for governance. They're keen to point out this won't be governance over the core game, that needs to stay centralised and focused on delivering the optimal player experience (having worked in games I can confirm this is the correct decision). But instead they'll look to hand over other community impacting decisions to the community.
And I think this is smart. It's using a token for exactly what a token is good at and not for anything it isn't

Does it need to be on LFG though? Likely not, but it's also likely going to be somewhat (if not very) popular so it will be net beneficial to the space.

https://www.jupresear.ch/t/introducing-nyan-heroes-to-lfg-a-flagship-aaa-shooter-on-solana/11529/13

(new) DSID 𑁍 — Makers of the one and only Solana ID

This is one where I think the core idea is fine, I just can't fathom how this will work as a business in of itself.

The idea you can leverage on chain data to both prove user value AND target user groups is not new. Even one dev memecoin projects have figured out you can find good likely users via on chain data. On chain data is how people target Saga users and reward high value users for token airdrops.
Community management/engagement platforms like Guild, TaskOn etc.. allow you to implement wallet based tasks and DIY platforms are emerging to let users design their own on chain data actions.
So I don't really see the moat here. This space is fast commoditising so DSID are going to have to find ways to be a value add over and above these existing options.

I can see the value in allowing users who want to KYC do so and link their wallet data, but I don't think it's a large enough number and the risk of identity theft is probably too high. The best thing about on chain data is it can't be stolen by anyone as it's already freely available. I think the bigger unlock would be gracefully dealing with stolen/compromised wallets and consolidating multiple wallets under one profile. Both things I don't think they are able to deal with now.

https://www.jupresear.ch/t/dsid-makers-of-the-one-and-only-solana-id-solid-application-for-lfg/7157

(new) Sanctum LFG: building the infinite-LST future

I'm voting for these guys. And it wasn't even a contest to be honest. I love Sanctum. I'll be writing a post about Solana LSTs in the near future and these guys will feature heavily.
Please go to their website and check them out when you get a chance. You won't be disappointed.

https://app.sanctum.so/lsts

This is great. I love it. Transferred a large chunk of my SOL exposure into Sanctum LSTs just recently.

What I really like about this is how UA (user acquisition) focused this is. The old model, the one from Ethereum is: Launch an LST and a protocol token (i.e., LDO) and use that token to bribe a bunch of ETH into your LST. EigenLayer is just all that layered on top.
If you do that then all you become is an ETH LST providers and how many of them do we actually need?
And so we've seen a few, but not many, LST providers on Solana all with their own tokens, following the same playbook e.g., bSOL, mSOL, jitoSOL

Sanctum's innovation is to get projects who already have their own UA for other reasons (coffee, memecoins, charity, gaming… whatever) and let them add their own SOL LST to their existing utility. Everyone eats. Or PvE as they so eloquently put it.
Wen bulbSOL @BULB Official ?

LFG entry https://www.jupresear.ch/t/sanctum-lfg-building-the-infinite-lst-future/5339/62
Pitch doc https://docs.google.com/document/d/1eneIop2V4JFL0W9PHkviuTWWMosKilXkud7k6vu33b0/edit

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!