Catsanbul Recap: Biggest Announcements from Jupiter’s Inaugural Event

Catsanbul, Jupiter’s inaugural event uniting crypto’s biggest DAO, kicked off Solana’s 2025 event calendar in style. 

The ‘un-conference’ unveiled a wealth of critical announcements for Solana’s most popular DeFi app, blazing the trail for Jupiter’s continued growth.

What are the biggest takeaways from Jupiter’s Catstanbul and could there be any unintended side-effects from key product updates?

$JUP Buybacks

Jupiter released a constant stream of landmark updates throughout the weekend, but none was better received than the announcement of a $JUP buyback mechanism.

$JUP holders have long been concerned by the token’s limited utility, with $JUP serving solely as a governance token. Prior to Catsanbul, $JUP’s only use case was to vote in governance proposals to acquire more $JUP, creating an unsustainable cycle of artificial value.

Addressing these concerns, Meow announced that 50% of all Jupiter protocol fees will be used to buy $JUP off the open market, with acquired tokens held in a ‘long-term litterbox’.

$JUP buybacks are expected to have a tremendous impact on $JUP’s market value. According to Dune Analytics, Jupiter’s perpetual exchange generated over $50.09M in fees in the first three weeks of 2025 alone. After subtracting 75% of these fees for $JLP growth, the Jupiter perps exchange is currently generating $4.17M in average weekly fees.

If Jupiter continued to generate $4.17M in average weekly fees, the protocol would programmatically buy back 0.11% of $JUP’s circulating supply each week at current prices. This doesn’t account for additional fees from Jupiter’s other products.

Throughout 2024, buyback mechanisms have been proven as a sustainable model for token value accrual, with tokens like $RAY and $STEP enjoying consistent price appreciation supported by protocol revenue.

Jupiter Ultra and JupNET

In support of $JUP buybacks, Jupiter launched a completely revamped site and UX called Ultra mode. Jupiter’s new Ultra mode introduces real-time slippage estimation, dynamic priority fees, and optimized transaction landing.

According to Jupiter, Ultra promises to be 10x cheaper and provide 10x better routing options than competitors. For more experienced traders, Manual mode offers users greater control over their swaps, allowing them to exclude certain AMMs and select their own fees and broadcast mode.

While Manual mode remains completely free, Jupiter Ultra mode adds a 0.1% protocol fee on token swaps, with 0.05% fees charged on stablecoin swaps.

Additionally, Jupiter unveiled its vision for the upcoming JupNet, an omnichain network that aims to aggregate multiple blockchains into a single decentralized ledger. JupNet will debut DOVEs, Jupiter’s proprietary network of decentralized oracles that consolidate truth from various chains, facilitating more accurate price feeds from the wider market.

JupNet also introduces Jupiter’s ADIs, or aggregated decentralized identities. ADIs propose a new approach towards blockchain account management by abstracting away complexities like seed phrases into more familiar web2 standards.

Magic Fund

Staying abreast of Solana’s explosive AI Agent meta, Jupiter announced its support of the sector through a collaboration with ElizaOS, the AI framework behind ai16z.

Working closely alongside ElizaOS founder and ai16z lead Shaw, Jupiter’s Magic Fund has committed $10M to the continued development of meaningful open-source AI protocols within the Solana ecosystem.

More Acquisitions

In its continued expansion, Jupiter announced several new acquisitions. After absorbing the SolanaFM blockchain explorer and Coinhall charting protocol in 2024, Jupiter announced it acquired a majority stake in Moonshot, a popular memecoin trading app known for its simplified UI.

Jupiter also announced the acquisition of Sonarwatch, a multichain portfolio tracking site.

Will Fees Drive Away Users?

While Jupiter’s wealth of announcements is undeniably bullish for the growth of the protocol, the wider Solana community has remarked that this move is the beginning of the end of Jupiter’s aggregator monopoly.

Jupiter has dominated Solana’s dex aggregation market for years, but new protocols are emerging to challenge Jupiter’s reign. Rival products offering feeless swaps may be able to siphon Jupiter’s market share, leveling the playing field among Solana DEX aggregators.

Other Solana ecosystem founders have come out in support of Jupiter’s new fee model. Paying homage to Jupiter’s contribution to Solana DeFi, Tensor co-founder Richard Wu highlighted how Jupiter’s manual mode still charged zero fees.

Drawing the event to a close, attendees watched on as a 20-foot ‘Burning Cat’ sculpture went up in flames, symbolizing the destruction of 3B $JUP tokens as voted by the Jupiter DAO. 

Since the beginning of Catstanbul, $JUP’s market value has increased by 18%, rising from $0.84 to currently trade hands at $1.01, based on Step Analytics.

Read More on SolanaFloor

Is Vine coming back?

Vine Founder Launches Memecoin Amidst Elon Musk Acquisition Rumors

What is DeFi?