The Jupiter decentralized exchange's (DEX) aggressive $70 million token buyback campaign throughout 2025 has proven insufficient in halting the steep decline of its native JUP token. The token has plummeted 89% from its all-time high, facing relentless selling pressure from a massive $1.2 billion in scheduled token unlocks.
Jupiter founder Siong ignited a community debate by proposing a strategic pivot. He suggested pausing the buyback program to reallocate the $70 million toward growth incentives for both existing and new users. "We spent more than $70 million on buybacks last year, and the price obviously didn’t move much," Siong wrote on X. The buybacks only covered approximately 6% of the unlocked tokens, a drop in the ocean against monthly unlocks of 53 million JUP scheduled through June 2026, which have increased the circulating supply by roughly 150% since launch.
Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko entered the discussion with a novel proposal for protocol treasury management. He suggested that protocols should store profits as future claimable assets and implement a one-year staking reward system for long-term holders. "This would force all the unlocks to trade at the future expected post buyback price," Yakovenko stated. He elaborated, "Let people lockup and stake for a year to get a token yield. So as the balance sheet grows those who stake net a bigger claim." This model emphasizes long-term capital formation and value anchoring over short-term market support.
The debate extends beyond Jupiter, as evidenced by the Helium network's recent decision to suspend its HNT token repurchase program after seeing minimal market impact. Critics argue that in utility-driven crypto ecosystems, buybacks often create only short-term optical effects and fail against structural selling pressure from team unlocks and high emissions.
Jupiter remains a top-tier platform on Solana, attracting 1.48 million unique users and generating $169.8 million in monthly volume, according to DappRadar. The core challenge is balancing immediate price support with sustainable ecosystem growth, with Yakovenko's staking proposal emerging as a potential path forward for stronger tokenomics.
