In a surprising turn of events, a seven-year-old defunct Ethereum-based protocol, Jupiter, experienced a sudden surge in its price just hours before the launch of Solana-based Jupiter’s massive $700 million airdrop. The unexpected spike, driven by a similar ticker shared with the Solana project, resulted in a 430% increase in the token’s value before a rapid decline.
Data from CoinMarketCap reveals that the price of the Ethereum-based JUP token skyrocketed from $0.005 on January 30 to $0.026 on January 31, only to fall back to its current price of $0.007.
Jupiter, originally launched in 2017 as an Ethereum-based protocol for decentralized applications (DApps), is officially listed as “no longer active.” In contrast, the Solana-based Jupiter serves as a decentralized exchange aggregator, enabling users to swap, place limit orders, and employ dollar-cost average buying strategies for tokens on the Solana network.
The peculiar price action on the Ethereum-based JUP occurred just hours before the Solana-based exchange aggregator Jupiter initiated its highly anticipated airdrop, one of the largest in Solana’s history.
Despite the Ethereum-based protocol’s dormant status, it seems traders were quick to capitalize on the ticker similarity, driving the token’s price to unprecedented levels. However, the surge was short-lived, underscoring the volatility and speculative nature of the cryptocurrency market.
Austin Federa, the head of strategy at the Solana Foundation, expressed satisfaction with the Solana network’s performance during the airdrop. The Solana network successfully processed 2.5 million non-vote transactions in the first two and a half hours of Jupiter claims going live.
Federa highlighted the relatively low gas fees on Solana, reaching an “astronomical fee” of 0.01 SOL (approximately $1.02) at the peak of the claiming frenzy. This is in stark contrast to the exorbitant gas fees witnessed on the Ethereum network during popular airdrops, as seen in the ApeCoin launch in March 2022, where users reportedly paid up to $3,500 in gas fees to claim their tokens.
While the Solana-based JUP airdrop proceeded smoothly, there were reports of issues from users of third-party apps, such as Phantom Wallet and Solflare, during the first hour of the event.
According to Federa, the problems were attributed to remote procedure call (RPC) nodes, the interface connecting user wallets to the network, and not the base layer of the Solana network itself.
As the dust settles from this eventful airdrop, a pseudonymous seventeen-year-old investor claims to have amassed over $1 million from the Solana-based JUP airdrop. Dune Analytics data from Osk2020 indicates that 41% of eligible wallets have claimed their JUP tokens, with a total of 566 million JUP (57% of the total airdrop allocation) being claimed since the airdrop commenced at 10:00 am Eastern Time on January 31.
The intersection of a dormant Ethereum-based token and the bustling Solana airdrop serves as a reminder of the dynamic and unpredictable nature of the cryptocurrency market, where even inactive projects can briefly capture the attention of traders seeking short-term gains.