Solana-based Jupiter sparks controversy for collaborating with Irene Zhao

Decentralized cryptocurrency aggregator Jupiter has found itself in the middle of a controversy after announcing a collaboration with an exposed influencer.

Decentralized exchange aggregator Solana, Jupiter, has sparked a huge outrage in the crypto community following its announcement of a collaboration with Irene Zhao, a Singaporean influencer previously implicated in multiple dubious crypto-related activities.

In an announcement for x on July 22, Jupiter’s anonymous founder, known as @weremeow, unveiled the collaboration aimed at improving the “meme coin meta” and giving “degens a mom on chain to take care of them when they’re sad.” With the initiative, the Jupiter founder said the trading platform wants to address “major issues” plaguing the current meme coin launch environment, such as “fake wide distribution, sniping,” and “lying influencers.”

“If this works, it could ideally serve as a model for other memecoins in contrast to the paranoid, flash-dump-prone, opaquely controlled, sniping-heavy launch meta we see today.”

@Weremeow

However, the announcement was met with swift backlash as the crypto community accused Jupiter of backing shady activities by associating them with Zhao.

Blockchain sleuth ZachXBT highlighted the irony of the collaboration, noting that Zhao had previously engaged in opaque dealings with his So-Col project. He claimed that Zhao previously “literally did exactly this (opaque allocations) with his SOCOL project by deceiving all early investors by making a secret deal with DWF where the terms were not disclosed to them and the community had no knowledge whatsoever about it.”

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In February 2023, market maker DWF Labs invested $1.5 million in Zhao's startup So-Col by acquiring native SIMP tokens. Zhao had He reportedly promised to lock the tokens in a one-year vesting period that would end in February 2024. However, blockchain data later revealed that DWF received over 3 million SIMP tokens in March and within the same time frame transferred approximately 2.6 million SIMP to cryptocurrency exchange KuCoin.

Zhao gained popularity in the crypto space in early 2022 by selling her photos as non-fungible tokens (nfts), amassing over $5 million. She later launched an nft collection called IreneDAO, aimed at “disrupting the creator economy.” The collection initially saw a floor price rise to 1.49 eth, but has since plummeted to 0.05 eth, representing an 87% drop from its all-time highs, according to CoinGecko data.