JUP Up Over 70% as Solana Holds Steady for Jupiter Airdrop

The long-awaited Jupiter token airdrop kicked off Wednesday morning, as the Solana-based decentralized exchange (DEX) aggregator launched its JUP token to nearly a million eligible wallets. And despite the immediate demand, the network is holding steady.

According to data aggregation platform Birdeye, JUP opened at a price of about $0.42 and has since climbed above $0.72, marking an increase of over 70% in just over an hour. JUP currently has a market cap of around $1 billion based on the circulating supply of 1.35 billion tokens, out of a grand total of 10 billion JUP that will eventually be available.

There’s some discrepancy over the opening price, however, as CoinGecko reports a starting price of $2.00 while CoinMarketCap pegs the starting price at $2.04. Both platforms report sizable drops since then, but the initial lack of liquidity may explain the wide range. This is typical for a new token launch, especially one with considerable demand.

Given how many wallets are eligible for this initial Jupiter airdrop and the expectation of a potentially sizable airdrop, the big question was whether the Solana network would be able to handle the demand—or if it would face downtime as it has in the past.

So far, Solana appears to be stable, with no reported downtime or outages. Solana’s blockchain explorer reports a rate of more than 2,000 transactions per second being handled, though it also shows substantial ping as users bombard the network with transaction attempts.

Jupiter’s claim page notes that the “network [is] very congested” and that “transactions might not get processed.” Some users have indeed noted failed transaction attempts on social media. But broadly, Solana appears to be humming along as it works through the demand.

SOL itself is up slightly since the airdrop began to a current price of about $101 per CoinGecko, breaking back above the $100 mark after dipping below earlier Wednesday morning.