Solana Co-Founder Discusses Jupiter’s $70M Buyback and Its Impact on JUP Price

Jupiter’s recent buyback effort has sparked a renewed discussion in the crypto community: Do buybacks work effectively when supply is consistently increasing?

Key Takeaways

Jupiter spent over $70 million on JUP buybacks in 2025, yet the token price did not see significant improvement.
The token's circulating supply increased by 150% since launch, leading to consistent sell pressure.
Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko highlighted that immediate buybacks do not help in high-emission environments and proposed accumulating funds for future buybacks instead.
Reactions within the Jupiter community vary on the necessity and effectiveness of buybacks.
Jupiter is readjusting its airdrop strategy to address the realities of supply dynamics.

Jupiter buybacks fall short as Solana co-founder explains JUP sell pressure

Jupiter's buyback initiative didn't manage to keep up with the volume of new JUP tokens being introduced to the marketplace. This conversation gained traction in early January following insights from Jupiter co-founder Siong Ong and remarks from Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko, leading to broader discussions about the practicality of token buybacks in high-emission crypto ecosystems.

An Overwhelmed Buyback Strategy

Jupiter utilized approximately half of its protocol's fee revenue, spending over $70 million in 2025 to repurchase JUP. Initially, this initiative seemed impressive, as Jupiter processed billions of transactions and established itself as one of the most active decentralized finance platforms within the Solana network.

"What do you all think if we stop the JUP buyback? We spent more than $70 million on buybacks last year, and the price obviously didn’t move much. We could use that amount for growth incentives for existing and new users. Should we do it?"
— ⚔️ SIONG (@sssionggg) January 3, 2026

However, the market's responsiveness told a different story. By early January 2026, the price of JUP hovered around $0.20 to $0.22, reflecting a staggering drop of nearly 89% from its highest point. The underlying issue was not the activity level on the exchange, but rather the rapid increase in token supply. Since its launch, the circulating supply of JUP has surged by approximately 150%, while the buyback initiative has only managed to counteract a minor portion of the newly unlocked tokens. These unlocks are scheduled to occur regularly.

As of June 2026, about 53 million JUP tokens are set to unlock each month, consistently creating sell pressure regardless of the protocol's performance. In this context, buybacks served as a temporary buffer rather than a sustainable long-term solution. Ong recognized this reality and suggested it would be inefficient to keep allocating funds toward buybacks, advocating for a shift in focus toward growth incentives.

Yakovenko’s Perspective on Buyback Limitations

Yakovenko described the situation in more straightforward terms. In markets characterized by heavy emissions, immediate buybacks do not alter how sellers evaluate risk. Tokens that unlock today are sold at the current market price, rather than a future value anticipated from ongoing repurchases.

"Protocols should actually stash the cash for a future buyback. This would force all the unlocks to trade at the future expected post-buyback price."
— toly 🇺🇸 (@toly) January 4, 2026

He proposed a time-based alternative: Instead of executing buybacks immediately, protocols could accumulate profits and deploy them at a later date or introduce staking programs with longer lockup periods. This strategy compels unlocks to be assessed against a future price environment post-buyback instead of immediate market dynamics.

Yakovenko’s approach also encourages token holders to adopt a longer-term perspective, similar to traditional financial practices regarding balance sheets. Reactions within the Jupiter community have varied. Some believe buybacks are crucial for maintaining discipline and alignment, while others contend that their effectiveness diminishes in the face of such aggressive supply expansion.

Jupiter has already begun to change its strategy by scaling back its planned airdrop for 2026, reducing the allocation from 700 million to 200 million JUP. This key lesson is difficult to overlook: In token models where unlocks significantly overshadow buybacks, the latter seldom produce meaningful results.