Solana-based Jupiter sparks controversy for collaborating with Irene Zhao

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

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

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

“If these works, ideally it can serve as a model for other memecoins in contrast to the sniping, opaque control, instadumping prone, paranoid launch meta we see today.”

@weremeow

The announcement, however, was met with swift backlash as the crypto community accused Jupiter of endorsing 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 her project So-Col. He alleged that Zhao previously “literally did exactly this [opaque allocations] with her project SOCOL by rugging all of the early investors by doing a secret deal with DWF where terms were not disclosed to them and community had zero knowledge about.”

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

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.” Initially, the collection saw a price floor surge to 1.49 ETH but has since plummeted to 0.05 ETH, representing an 87% decline from its all-time highs, according to CoinGecko data.