Let’s Grow Jupiter!
Jupiter has the potential to attract a multi-million or even billion-strong user base, providing unprecedented access to financial markets, stablecoins, and decentralized finance (DeFi) to populations typically excluded from traditional financial systems.To do so we need to massively expand the community contributors, and the Jupiverse Ecosystem — and the Core Working Group aims to be one of the key driving forces behind that by empowering the Jupiverse to reach its full potential.
Core Working Group (CWG) Introduction
The Core Working Group (CWG) wants to help play a pivotal role in this transformation, tasked with co-creating an equitable environment for the Jupiter ecosystem to thrive. With a focus on designing and implementing processes, systems, and best practices for both holders and other working groups, the CWG aims to cultivate the most effective decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) in the world. Through initiatives such as creating pipelines for community contribution & creation, curating token lists, and facilitating launchpad processes, the CWG endeavors to empower the Jupiter community and propel the platform toward its vision of becoming the Global Decentralized Stock Exchange (GDSE).
As the CWG seeks long-term operational funding and alignment with the Jupiter ecosystem, it stands ready to steer the Jupiverse towards a new era of decentralized finance, not only for Jupiter but for the entire Solana ecosystem.
We’ve been given a set of tasks and initial areas to focus on:
- Assisting the facilitation of an environment for the J.U.P community to become DAO participants
- Maintaining the ecosystem strict list, and helping to develop the next iteration of the token list system
- Designing and Facilitating the LFG Launchpad Process (Voting design, application flow, AMAs, etc)
- Instantiating a Grants program
- Creating a pipeline for Catdet co-creation and contribution
- Setting up new Working Groups and providing them with support
An Overview of CWG Efforts
Retrospect / Done So Far
- Led discussions across Discord & Jupresear.ch, onboarding and activating new Space Catdets to be part of Jupiter’s mission.
- Creating the LFG Launchpad project introduction UX flow and process
- Creating the LFG Launchpad introduction content (AMAs, videos, transcripts, and Discord threads)
- Assisting the Catdet Working Group initial setup phase (Julian)
- Daily maintenance of strict tokenlist applications (up to 100/day at times)
- Initiated Meme Madness conceptual discussions
What we are working on
- Fine-tuning the LFG processes together with the cadets
- Rallying the ecosystem behind a new Ecosystem Token List, suitable across various platforms and use cases
- Designing the J.U.P Grants Program
- Developing a way for more tokens to access the LFG system, such as via permissionless launches or meme-coin categories
What we are planning to do
- Grow and expand the Jupiverse with by assisting with the creation of J.U.P Working Groups
- Help launch the J.U.P Grants Program, and make the most productive Grants Program in all of crypto by fostering more focused WGs to work on specific grant programs
- Help build up the first ecosystem-level token list for the safety and convenience of all users of Solana
The CWG Members:
C2yptic - A member of the Jupiter community since day one, an active member of several known DAOs such as MonkeDAO, BanditoDAO, GrapeDAO, and MetaDAO.
- Former core team member of Marinade.Finance
- Brought Liquid Staking to the forefront of Solana in its early days with mSOL — drastically helping the mission to decentralize and secure the Solana network and improve the Solana DeFi environment with LSTs
- Created Pool Party, Solana’s first Prize Linked Savings protocol
- Revived the notorious Saber Protocol through a DAO initiative, now revitalized and active
- Honorable mentions twice in Solana Hackathons
- DAO council member for MeteoraDAO
- Advised and/or consulted several web3 and web2 projects
Slorg - Dedicated to organizing the pursuit of public goods. His early experiences on Solana provided him with a foundational understanding of how web3 communities succeed and fail.
- Oversees and scales the Sol-Incinerator, one of the most used dApps on Solana with over 525,000 lifetime users
- A prolific writer with threads that have received millions of impressions and affected legitimate change in the Solana cultural space
- Hosted over 85 AMAs with industry leaders
- Former team member of Solana Sanctuary, the organization that created the earliest on-chain NFT DAOs on Solana in September 2021
- Chief Strategist for Phase Protocol & RadiantsDAO, which have placed in 4 hackathons and are currently working on user-friendly DAO tooling, as well as Lighthouse, which is an open-source protocol that safeguards wallets from the majority of wallet drainer methods
Kemosabe - Prolific creative with over a decade of experience in video, music, & audio production, front-end development, graphic, and UI/UX design.
- Full-time independent contractor on Solana since September of 2021
- Provides consulting, creative, & writing services for ecosystem public good efforts and comms emergencies (Metaplex, Solana Foundation, Sandbar, & more)
- Co-founded the earliest on-chain NFT DAOs on Solana (Sept 2021)
- Co-launched the first decentralized NFT marketplace on Solana in June of 2022 in collaboration with GrapeDAO
- Designed and built ~20 websites for Solana projects
- UX Architecture for 4+ hackathon-winning programs
- Co-founder, creative director, and artist of RadiantsDAO, a Creative Commons 1/1 PFP project focused on building public goods. Functionally, it makes other NFT projects deflationary and has burnt over $1.5 million worth of NFTs to date. Radiants is also the 2nd 1/1 project to spin up a Solana validator
Durden - Core team member of Lifinity.
- DAO Council member in MeteoraDAO
- DAO contributor/advisor to a number of projects such as Marinade, SaberDAO, MetaDAO, and Vota
- Vocal propagator of the gospel of Jupiter’s aggregator since its inception
- Known DeFi thought leader in the Solana ecosystem
Why ‘Core’?
The Core aspect of the working group emerges from our foundational role in constructing the conditions necessary for the Jupiter community to thrive in this emerging web3 era. Much will happen over the next decade, and for a DAO to succeed it is crucial to have people who have domain expertise in the areas of media production, blockchain, and Web3 social dynamics.
All of this is to ultimately create a strong and resilient fundament for the J.U.P to stand upon so that the long-term space mission is a smashing success for all JUP holders.
All members of the CWG are seasoned Web3 natives and key industry leaders: with unique perspectives and experience in areas such as DAOs, protocol architecture, and communication, as well as building and running successful dApps and communities. Each member is broadly recognized for their strong and longstanding presence in the Solana community and their contributions to positive development and public goods throughout the ecosystem’s lifetime.
As we near the end of the CWG’s 3-month introductory period, we hope that we’ve proved our worth and value to the Cats of Solana: We are ready to tackle the long-term mission of stewarding the Jupiverse. We humbly present this proposal for long-term operational funding and incentive alignment with the J.U.P.
Encouraging Widespread Participation In The J.U.P DAO
DeFi was the first step in ushering in an era of community-centric finance. Its promise was, and is, to give financial autonomy to individuals anywhere in the world: further empowering the sovereign individual. However, as with anything new, the first iteration is not final.
By and large, the regular person is not incentivised to contribute to building this decentralized and inclusive financial future in a meaningful way. Most users aren’t actively rewarded for their contributions or participation, regardless of financial status, in a manner that increases their influence in the organizations that they dedicate significant time to. Now we must venture into building the sovereign community.
What we want the Jupiverse to be is more about being inclusive, and rewarding active contributions and dedicated community members more than passive stakers or liquidity miners.
One of the first steps towards this was the historical JUP retroactive Airdrop claim in Jupuary. The next step was the creation of an open and transparent LFG application and governance approach, shortly followed by the newly introduced concept of Active Stake Rewards (ASR).
Together with the Catdets, the Jupiter and Solana communities, and the Jupiter team, the CWG intends to be a big part of making DeFi 2.0 more meaningful to a broader audience.
One of the first foundational steps the CWG took in ushering in this new era of decentralized community finance (ComFi?) was our involvement in the LFG launchpad process. By curating applicants and disseminating quality information to the DAO, the community was able to make informed choices on which candidates would most benefit the Jupiverse and crypto as a whole.
Below we unpack this process as a Case-Study:
Designing the LFG Launchpad
Along with the team and community, the CWG worked on designing and enacting the LFG launchpad process. Our core mission was to design a voting system that was:
- Fun to engage with and community-centric
- On-chain and transparent
- Sorted by relevance and quality
- Intimate and respectful of each and every candidate
Instead of having the initial suggestions of YES/NO votes, we suggested an approach where you can choose your favorite among several candidates in order to create a somewhat competitive environment… What we realized is that most token and NFT launchpads are directly incentivized to launch as many projects as possible.
This enabled us to incentivize a meaningful prioritization of the “best” possible projects. The key to this was limiting the amount of LFG launches to 2 per month. Additionally, this put JUP holders in the front seat of driving the actual decision on which projects they were most excited about.
Additionally, a short lockup period for the ASR rewards (the 0.75% launchpad fee) was implemented. The intention behind this was to incentivize JUP holders to plan carefully who they would vote for — as the lockup period would mean their tokens are disbursed ~3 months post-launch. There were three considerations for this:
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“How do we design a system that incentivizes JUP holders to vote for the most viable projects?” — The lockup period incentivizes long-term thinking at a magnitude that is hard to exceed with short-term incentives or “bribes.” The 0.75% ASR of a $1bn market cap token is better than 10% of a $10mm token in the eyes of the majority of voters.
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“How do we design a system that people are excited to participate in?” The core answers here were twofold. First, we needed to ensure LFG launches remained special, this meant avoiding what other token and NFT launchpads have done in the past — launch too many tokens. Second, ensure that the filter process and ASR were done to reward active participants over passive ones.
Breaking this down, with this approach we made sure that:
- The LFG process was open, fair and neutral
- JUP Token utility made sense and had more value
- JUP Token governance weight mattered
- JUP Holders made more in-depth decisions than simply voting yes on everything
- LFG Launchpad decision-making was decentralized and in the hands of the JUP holders
- The long-term health of the launchpad was maintained and holders aren’t bludgeoned with too many launches
The Community's Power
We strongly believe in the power of the community. Hundreds of thousands of voices are hundreds of thousands of brains all combined into an unchallengeable giga-brain. The challenge lies in converging these voices and talents into single points of interest. Most communities get lost in the sauce of decentralization — leading to chaos and anarchy. If the Jupiter community was a supercomputer, the CWG would be the task manager in addition to contributing to the design of the apps it runs. This requires an abundance of pin-point expertise, experience designing and running successful communities, and incredibly niche Solana domain area knowledge.
Summary
So far, the CWG has been working closely with the Jupiter team on various projects, notably focusing on processes, communications, and design that affect the community as a whole. Our guiding principle is ensuring that incentives are aligned between $JUP token holders, active participants & community members, the Jupiter team, and the entire crypto community.
Now, it’s time to plan for the future and ensure our incentives are aligned, and we feel confident that now is the time to take this stride.
To date, the CWG has been operating on a trial budget of $100K USDC. This budget has covered operating expenses for the CWG members and moderators for four months — starting in January.
However, the CWG is a Jupiter ecosystem entity, not an arm of the Jupiter team, and therefore must be funded by the DAO budget. Additionally, the CWG received no $JUP allocation at the launch — as an ecosystem entity it is important to allocate tokens from the DAO itself, rather than the team to ensure that incentives are correctly aligned.
Funding the CWG - The Incentive Alignment Proposal
The CWG is proposing a 12-month budget to cover expenses and a token allocation plan:
- 12-Month Expense Budget: $400,000 (3 full-time salaries, 1 part-time salary, all moderator salaries, as well as a $80k overflow budget for hiring additional members and funding community initiatives)
- JUP Token Allocation: 2.5M - 5M JUP
Vesting, with a cliff, corresponds directly to the allocation amount. - The expense budget is intended to cover our work hours, ensuring we can sustain ourselves while contributing to the community.
Here are various suggestions on how this might look like:
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5M JUP
Allows for aggressive CWG expansion of new CWG members and community initiatives.
24-month vesting - 12-month cliff -
3.5M JUP
Allows for a moderate CWG expansion of new CWG members and community initiatives.
12-month vesting - 6-month cliff -
2.5M JUP
Maintains the current status of the CWG. Limited community initiatives.
12-month vesting - no cliff
For example, if the vesting period is 12 months and the cliff is 6:
- This means that at the 6 month mark, we would start receiving tokens which would trickle out for the remaining 6 months.
- If the vesting period is 12 months with no cliff, we would receive tokens immediately over the 12 month period
- The cliff is when tokens start to be received, and the vesting period is the total time.
In conclusion
Lastly, thank you for taking the time to read and consider this post. The Core Working Group members are keen to hear your feedback on this proposal draft and formally ratify the first of many Jupiter Working Groups. We look forward to contributing alongside the Catdets as well as assisting in the formation of more JWGs.
