Solana-based Jupiter sparks controversy for collaborating with Irene Zhao

Decentralized cryptocurrency aggregator Jupiter has found itself in the middle of controversy after announcing a collaboration with a well-known influencer.

Solana’s decentralized exchange aggregator Jupiter has sparked widespread outrage in the crypto community after announcing that it will be collaborating with Singaporean influencer Irene Zhao, who has previously been implicated in several questionable crypto-related activities.

In a July 22 X announcement, the anonymous founder of Jupiter, known as @weremeow, announced the collaboration, which aims to improve the “meme coin meta” and give “degens an on-chain mother to look after them when they’re sad.” With the initiative, the Jupiter founder said he wants to address “big issues” affecting the trading platform’s current meme coin launch landscape, such as “fake wide distribution, sniping,” and “lying influencers.”

“If these work, they could ideally serve as a model for other memecoins, as opposed to the sniping, opaque control, instant dumping-prone, paranoid launch meta we see today.”

@Our people

However, this announcement was met with a swift backlash, with the crypto community accusing Jupiter of endorsing shady activities by associating it with Zhao.

Blockchain detective ZachXBT highlighted the irony of the collaboration, noting that Zhao had previously made opaque deals regarding the So-Col project. He claimed that Zhao had previously “done exactly that.” [opaque allocations] “With the SOCOL project, he deceived all early stage investors by making a secret agreement with DWF, the terms of which were not disclosed to them and of which the public had no knowledge.”

It’s funny to see Irene Zhao working on a “solution” for opaque allocations, where she did exactly the same thing in the SOCOL project, deceiving all early stage investors by making a secret deal with DWF where the terms were not disclosed to them and the community had no knowledge of it… picture.twitter.com/p0lCpl04mn

— ZachXBT (@zachxbt) July 22, 2024

In February 2023, market maker DWF Labs invested $1.5 million into Zhao’s startup So-Col by purchasing native SIMP tokens. Zhao reportedly promised to lock up the tokens during a one-year vesting period scheduled to end in February 2024. However, blockchain data later revealed that DWF acquired over 3 million SIMP tokens in March and transferred around 2.6 million SIMP to crypto exchange KuCoin during the same timeframe.

Zhao gained popularity in the crypto space in early 2022 by selling her photos as non-fungible tokens (NFTs), raising over $5 million. She later launched an NFT collection called IreneDAO, which aims to “disrupt the creator economy.” Initially, the collection saw a price floor increase to 1.49 ETH, but has since fallen to 0.05 ETH, representing an 87% drop from all-time highs, according to CoinGecko data.