Jupiter surged 35% after hodler JUP staked $123 million to choose its next launch token

The native token of Solana-based decentralized exchange (DEX) aggregator Jupiter surged on Thursday, seemingly aided in part by the platform's implementation of an incentive voting mechanism for community members to choose which tokens to launch next through its launchpad

JUP rose 35 percent to $0.78, pushing the token's market capitalization back to more than $1 billion before retreating to $0.71.

JUP price chart. Source: TradingView

The biggest jump in the token's short 5-week history comes in part due to Jupiter's launch of a complex community governance initiative involving the LFG token launchpad.

Last month, Jupiter anonymous founder Meow announced that Jupiter community members would soon decide which of the few pre-selected Solana-based projects would win the opportunity to issue native tokens through LFG. Today, that day has come — and community members also learn that they can earn great rewards by participating in the process.

To vote on the proposal opened on the Jupiter DAO website this afternoon, community members must stake any total JUP tokens other than 0. The more tokens are placed, the more user votes will have a corresponding impact

According to an announcement from Jupiter this afternoon, voters will also receive monetary rewards for participating in the LFG selection process. 100 million JUP, as well as 75% of launchpad fees from future LFG launches, were earmarked for distribution to DAO voters. Those rewards will be distributed quarterly

Within hours of LFG's Round 1 opening, Jupiter community members staked a whopping 158.46 million JUP — worth about $123.44 million — to vote on the proposal.

LFG voters will have a choice between six Solana projects that have engaged Jupiter community members with various outreach initiatives over the past month. Those projects include:

• UpRock, an AI-powered data rewards network;
• Banx, an NFT lending service;
• Srcful, a decentralized virtual power plant;
• Sharky, another platform for NFT-backed loans;
• Zeus, a tool for interacting with Bitcoin on Solana;
• MonkeyDEX, an application decentralized exchange

Source: vote.jup.ag

SharkyFi emerged as the leader of the competition, winning 39% of the dominant vote (with the vote count adjusted to reflect the number of JUPs staked by voters). Zeus is not far behind with an approval rating of 33%; in third place is UpRock, with 14%. Jupiter DAO community members have until Sunday to vote

Voters who want to unstake their JUP from the Jupiter DAO can do so at any time. The unstaking process will take 30 days; during that time, community members can still vote on Jupiter DAO proposals, with diminishing voting power.

Although the activities of the Jupiter DAO and the LFG program were considered completely decentralized, the candidates for the first round of LFG voting were selected by Jupiter's leadership

The company said earlier this week that candidates for future rounds of LFG will continue to be selected by Jupiter leadership or the Jupiter DAO's Community Working Group (CWG), at least for the time being. Jupiter DAO will eventually nominate projects for the program "as it matures."