Jupiter (JUP) is the governance token of Jupiter, a decentralized exchange aggregator and trading platform built on Solana.
Jupiter began as a swap-routing aggregator that sources liquidity across Solana decentralized exchanges to execute trades. It has since expanded into an "everything exchange," adding perpetual futures, a lending product (Jupiter Lend), prediction markets, portfolio tools, a stablecoin (JUPUSD), and a liquid-staking token (JUPSOL). The protocol is nominally governed by Jupiter DAO.
Jupiter differentiates itself through routing technology (including "Metis" and slippage-aware "JIT Swap") that narrows the gap between quoted and executed prices when aggregating liquidity across Solana's decentralized exchanges. This underpins a broader "everything exchange" spanning swaps, lending, and perpetuals, with combined protocol TVL of $3.339B as of 2026-08-30.
JUP captures this activity through the Litterbox Trust, which since February 2025 has allocated 50% of protocol revenue to buy back and lock JUP for three years, holding roughly 142.7 million JUP by mid-2026.
JUP is Jupiter's governance token, used primarily for voting on Jupiter DAO proposals such as treasury allocation and community initiatives.
Holders can also stake JUP to earn Active Staking Rewards (ASR); tokens locked under the team vesting schedule are excluded from ASR. JUP is separate from Jupiter's other products, such as the JUPUSD stablecoin and JUPSOL liquid-staking token, which serve different functions.
JUP has a circulating supply of approximately 3.32 billion tokens against a total supply of about 6.86 billion, as of 2026-08-31.
Circulating supply is still expanding as airdrop and vesting unlocks release new tokens, an inflationary pressure partly offset by the Litterbox Trust, which has locked JUP purchased with protocol revenue since February 2025.
JUP launched through a retroactive airdrop on January 31, 2024, known as "Jupuary 2024," one of the largest airdrops in crypto history. Roughly 1 billion tokens went to nearly 1 million eligible wallets. A second airdrop in January 2025 distributed 700 million JUP to about 2 million wallets, and a further "Jupuary 2026" round was confirmed by governance vote in December 2024. No ICO or private sale preceded the token. The project itself was founded in October 2021, well before the 2024 token launch; on-chain deployment is dated 2024-01-25.
JUP is deployed as a native SPL token (Metaplex token standard) on Solana. Solana secures the network using Proof of History combined with a Proof of Stake consensus mechanism, in which validators stake SOL to process and confirm transactions.
Jupiter does not operate its own blockchain or independent validator set; it runs entirely as an application layer on top of Solana.
Jupiter was founded in October 2021 by pseudonymous developers known as "Meow" and Siong Ong.
Meow had earlier in 2021 co-founded Mercurial Finance, a Solana stablecoin-focused decentralized exchange, alongside Ben Chow.
Jupiter operates publicly as "Jupiter" (also known as Jupiter Exchange).
Development and maintenance are associated with Jupiter DAO, and the project maintains an open-source presence (github.com/jup-ag) alongside official channels at jup.ag. As of 2026, Jupiter has partnered with Securitize and Jump Trading Group to offer tokenized-equity access alongside its existing swap, lending, and perpetuals products.
Jupiter is governed by Jupiter DAO, launched in March 2024 with an initial treasury of roughly $137 million (10 million USDC plus 100 million JUP). The treasury was intended to fund contributor incentives and community initiatives with annual top-ups.
The DAO paused voting at one point following community backlash over the founding team's outsized voting power. In June 2025, co-founder Meow committed that the founding team would not vote its own vesting token allocation. A live forum proposal seeks to raise the share of protocol revenue routed to the Litterbox buyback-and-lock mechanism from 50% to 70%.
Jupiter's 2025-2026 development has centered on expanding beyond DEX aggregation into a "everything exchange."
Jupiter's products have been audited by multiple independent firms, including Offside Labs, OtterSec, Sec3, Certora, Code4rena, Mixbytes, Zenith, and Neodyme. The most recent audits covered Swap (October 2025), Lend (March 2026), and Lend AMM (June 2026). An earlier OtterSec audit of the Perpetuals module found nine issues, including two high-risk findings.
Jupiter holds a CertiK Skynet score of 89.74 (AA), but CertiK has not conducted a formal audit of the project and lists no active CertiK bug bounty. On-chain liquidity relative to market capitalization is flagged as a high risk factor, at roughly 0.49% as of 2026-08-31.