Solana-Based Jupiter Sparks Controversy for Collaborating with Irene Zhao
Decentralized crypto aggregator Jupiter has found itself in the middle of controversy after announcing a collaboration with an exposed influencer
Introduction
Solana decentralized exchange aggregator Jupiter has provoked a ruckus in the cryptocurrency community because of a collaboration with the influencer named Irene Zhao caused a lot of buzz.
Announcement Sparks Outrage
In an X announcement on July 22, the anonymous founder of Jupiter, known as @weremeow, unveiled the collaboration aimed at improving the “meme coin meta” and giving “degens an on-chain mom to care for them when they are sad.” With the initiative, the Jupiter founder said the trading platform wants to address “major problems” plaguing the current meme coin launch environment, such as “fake wide distribution, sniping,” and “lying influencers.”
“If these works, ideally it can serve as a model for other memecoins in contrast to the sniping, opaque control, instadumping prone, paranoid launch meta we see today.” — @weremeow
The announcement of the partnership, nevertheless, the communal community scored a quick reaction on propelled Jupiter they presenting the chance to Zhao and likewise was accused of shady operations, the community became to be confrontational with the project as it is now seen as supporting Zhao who apparently is not the trustworthy person.
Community Reaction
Blockchain detective ZackXBT made a very interesting observation that Zhao ended up involving the same practices with her project So-Col that she had accused others of. He made an assumption that Zhao after all before “SO-COL” “did this shady business with her project SOCOL to all the early investors, she made a secret deal with DWF on terms that were not disclosed to them, and the community knew nothing about it.”
In February 2023, Zhao’s startup So-Col got $1.5 million from DWF Labs with the acquisition of native SIMP tokens. It was said beforehand that the stick will be locked in a one-year vesting period, ending in February 2024. However, based on blockchain data, it was found out that DWF had given 3 million SIMP in March and were also in the same period, only about 2.6 million SIMP were transferred to KuCoin.
Zhao’s Controversial History
Zhao was made known in the crypto world at the beginning of 2022 through selling her photos as non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and she had a collection of over $5 million in a few months. From the very beginning, she launched an NFT collection, IreneDAO with the slogan “disrupting the creator economy”. It started with a price floor that reached 1.49 ETH in the first place, but currently, it has been manipulated by 0.05 ETH, which is 87% lower than the peak, as per CoinGecko data.
Conclusion
The quarrel between Jupiter and Irene Zhao has really become a hot topic in the crypto community, creating doubts about the transparency and faith in such collaborations. As the conflict rages on, little will be the clearer if this case would dent Jupiter’s reputation and produce any impact on the broader crypto landscape.
