Experts surveyed by CoinDesk said that Solana innovation is at risk due to the growing popularity of the Jupiter protocol

What’s new? Despite the general correction of the crypto market since the beginning of the week, the native token of the decentralized exchange (DEX) aggregator Jupiter under the ticker JUP rose more than 34% against bitcoin over the past week. The asset’s strong performance was the result of a series of announcements during Jupiter’s first in-person conference, Catstanbul 2025. At the conference, the protocol’s founder, under the pseudonym Meow, announced that 50% of fee revenue would be used to buy back JUP on the open market and place it in a long-term reserve.

CoinDesk’s material

What else is known? Increased attention to the platform could attract new users and liquidity to the Solana ecosystem in the long term, according to Ryan Lee, the chief analyst at Bitget Research. He noted that the buyback program could serve as a catalyst for long-term growth, as the team estimates that it could add hundreds of millions of dollars a year to the buyback.

According to Dune, Jupiter is the leading DEX aggregator on the Solana blockchain, with a total of 1,25 billion token exchange transactions totaling $2,2 trillion. In the last 24 hours, trading volume totaled $6,5 billion across 6,9 million swaps.

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While the announcements at Catstanbul 2025 have boosted JUP, they have raised some concerns among the community. For example, Chris Chung, the founder of Titan, a swap platform on the Solana network, said that traders are disappointed with the news that Jupiter will introduce a 5 basis points fee for default Ultra mode swaps.

Jupiter’s Ultra mode will include features such as real-time slippage assessment, dynamic priority fees, and optimized transaction processing, which are supported by the new Jupiter Shield security tool. Ryan Lee of Bitget Research noted that the protocol’s success could be followed by the risk of centralization.

“If Jupiter continues to increase its influence and become the dominant player in the Solana ecosystem, it could lead to over-reliance on a single project. The situation is contrary to the principles of blockchain which are aimed at decentralization and distribution of influence,” Lee explained.

Jupiter also announced the purchase of meme token launchpad Moonshot and portfolio tracker SonarWatch, which Chung believes indicates Jupiter’s intention to dominate the entire Solana ecosystem and is “unhealthy and detrimental for innovation and for the user experience.”

According to the Titan founder, Jupiter’s actions amount to “monopolistic behavior” that allows for “raise prices further and further in absence of competition,” which should not be the case in decentralized finance.