Jupiter Users to Receive Free JUP Tokens as Protocol Announces Second Airdrop

Crypto users of Jupiter, a decentralized exchange aggregator on Solana, are about to receive free money.

Crypto users of Jupiter, a decentralized exchange aggregator on Solana, are about to receive free money.

On Wednesday, Jupiter contributors announced the protocol’s second airdrop is expected to occur next week before the protocol’s January 25-26 “Catstanbul” conference in Istanbul.

“An exact claim date will be announced later this week,” said @MessiasMorten, who is part of Jupiter DAO’s core working group, in the protocol’s Discord.

Out of 700 million total JUP tokens allocated for the airdrop, 440 million tokens have been earmarked for users, 60 million JUP are for stakers, and the remaining will be used as “carrots,” which are growth campaigns to bring more users to the onchain swapping venue, according to Jupiter contributor Kash Dhanda.

Airdrops are a method by which cryptocurrency projects distribute free tokens en masse to existing and potential users. These distributions are intended to reward community members for early participation, bring new people to the protocol, and incentivize continued involvement.

Second-Time Airdropping

This will be the second time that Jupiter has conducted an airdrop. Last year, 955,000 wallets qualified for a piece of 1 billion total tokens available in the 2024 airdrop.

“The first Jupuary set the foundation. The second Jupuary, we’re really trying to bootstrap it and make it as big and meaningful,” said Dhanda in an online livestream with 232,700 viewers on Wednesday.

“Jupuary,” a portmanteau combining “Jupiter” and “January,” refers to Jupiter’s airdrops, which have so far happened annually.

Jupiter contributor Mei (@9yointern on X), who helped with the airdrop’s design, said on the livestream that the “airdrop is just a way to bring people together.” She also indicated that Jupuary is not just about the airdrop as it is more about education and being forward-looking into how the protocol and its community members can grow.

Dhanda noted Jupuary and a corresponding airdrop will occur next year, but said the 2026 airdrop will look different from the previous years.

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How Jupiter Is Allocating JUP

Jupiter’s second airdrop will be based on the types of activity the users have engaged in, for instance, swapping vs. trying new products. Within each user type, the tokens will be distributed based on tiers and not linearly.

For example, “expert traders” are a small category of users who have been trying new products and providing feedback to Jupiter. Expert traders who qualify for the highest tier will receive 300,000 JUP each, an amount currently worth $246,000, while those qualifying for the lowest tier will get 20 JUP, now less than $20.

Those in Jupiter’s “swap user” group have a different ranking with the top tier having an allocation of 20,000 JUP tokens ($16,400) and the lowest receiving 25 ($20).

Addresses that are both a swap user and expert trader will receive both allocations.

According to Dhanda, the airdrop’s design is tier-based, because if the tokens were distributed linearly, only a tiny number of addresses would receive nearly the entire allocation of the JUP airdrop.

“The top 10% Swap Users (more than $8k in volume) were responsible for 99% of the total swap volume, and the top 1% of Swap Users (more than $200k in volume) were responsible for 97% of the total swap volume,” Dhanda wrote in Jupiter’s research forum on the same day.

The price of JUP has increased 3.6% in the last 24 hours, although it has dropped 22.5% in the past 30 days to trade at 82 cents, giving the token a market capitalization of nearly $1.4 billion, data from CoinGecko shows.

Jupiter is also the second largest decentralized finance protocol on Solana by total value locked at $2.5 billion, trailing liquid staking provider Jito, per DefiLlama.