The co-founder of Solana decentralized exchange Jupiter Siong Ong has asked the community if the trading platform should stop buying back its tokens, arguing that it did not do JUP’s price any benefits.

Siong brought up the discussion on X early Saturday morning, asking the community if Jupiter should halt its buyback program after allocating more than $70 million to token repurchases over the past year. Ong believes the capital could be well spent if redirected toward user growth and platform incentives instead. 

“We spent more than 70m on buyback last year and the price obviously didn’t move much. We can use the 70m to give out growth incentives for existing and new users. Should we do it?” he asked.

Jupiter had committed to directing half of its protocol revenue toward repurchasing JUP tokens and locking them for three years, a policy that officially began in February last year.

Crypto exchange founders debate if buybacks are worth it

Ong doubled down on his proposal by quoting comments from Amir Haleem, the chief executive and co-founder of Helium and parent company Nova Labs. Haleem had said his team was stepping away from token buybacks because markets were largely indifferent to such programs under current conditions.

Helium and its Mobile network generated $3.4 million in revenue in October alone, Haleem said, adding that the funds would be better deployed towards subscribers, increasing the network’s installed base, and improving carrier offload usage.

“We will be directing all our $ into those endeavors until morale improves, and data credits will continue to be burned for all carrier offload as always. Thank you for your attention to this matter!” the Nova Labs CEO surmised. 

Ong praised the decision, thanking Haleem for what he described as “taking the first step” and suggesting that Jupiter could follow suit.

Some Solana community members responded to the Jupiter co-founder by defending the buyback model, saying it would work long-term if paired with sustained revenue growth. One proponent argued that consistent protocol expansion would result in “more tokens being removed from circulation,” and this could boost JUP’s prices.

Responding to the above theory, one detractor accused the team of attempting to abandon commitments that had attracted investors to the token in the first place. The naysayer claimed canceling buybacks would undermine Jupiter’s success and JUP holders, warning that the token could lose relevance even if the platform continued to generate significant revenue.

“People bought JUP because buybacks aligned with the protocol’s success. Jupiter is doing well, token is doing well. Without buybacks, it becomes a memecoin with JUP logo that can cost 0 even if Jupiter rakes in billions, and that’s a pure rug,” the Solana enthusiast wrote on X.

Ong pushed back against the allegations and rejected the claims that executives were looking to rug the project. He said selling his own holdings would be the simplest way to gain any value, but JUP represented 99% of all of his net worth.

Jupiter’s head shuts down the staking idea

Among other ideas, community members proposed distributing protocol revenue directly to JUP stakers in the form of SOL or USDC rewards to help JUP’s valuation grow. Supporters of that approach believe organic price appreciation should follow revenue growth naturally, while staking rewards could motivate users to actively promote Jupiter adoption. 

They propounded that such a system would add more incentives for token holders by allowing participants to benefit directly from increased trading activity.

Ong bashed that idea, convinced that stakers do not meaningfully contribute to platform growth. He said rewarding passive holders was unlikely to increase the token’s adoption and that staking incentives could weaken the project’s competitive drive against other Solana-based DEXes.

Jupiter is among the top 5 most used exchanges on Solana in the last month, according to data from DappRadar. Raydium currently leads the 30-day trading charts with $793.8 million in trading volume, serving about 3.67 million unique active wallets. 

Meteora followed with approximately $9.38 million in monthly volume and 1.67 million active wallets, while Jupiter Exchange ranked close behind in wallet count, attracting around 1.48 million unique users over the same period and generating about $169.8 million in volume.

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