LFG started as an experiment to build the world’s first truly decentralized launchpad, with the community being actively involved every single step of the way, from the initial filtering of proposals by learning more about each project, to the many hours of AMAs and townhalls and Twitter Spaces, and finally to select the projects to launch with the voting.
As outlined in the first LFG post: [Archived] Jupiter LFG Launchpad the goal is to create a process that aimed to solve a number of issues with the current launch meta, including
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Opaqueness around trading activity during launches: LFG tackled this with transparent on-chain market making around launches.
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Project team getting the liquidity too early before price discovery is done – this is solved with the backstop buyer-regret liquidity in LFG.
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Adversarial relationship between early and late buyers – this is addressed with the Alpha Vault mechanism in LFG giving all buyers an opportunity to be “early” if they want to support the project.
And what a 9 months it has been! We have launched a total of 6 projects on LFG, with 1 more soon to come. This list includes top-tier projects such as Sanctum and deBridge, and of course, we launched our own JUP token on LFG too.
We are extremely proud of what we have accomplished together with the community’s efforts and we look forward to creating an even better experience for everyone in LFG v2 as we review the kinks in V1 and improve upon them.
What went well?
From a technical standpoint, every token launch was a success in that we facilitated a large number of airdrop claims and swaps transactions each time without much issues, even when the network was having congestion sometimes. We ensured the experience kept on improving after each launch, and it was only possible with the candid feedback from the community.
Several new mechanisms were also invented to support LFG.
We pioneered the ILM curve, allowing projects to design any liquidity curve they want to suit their launch strategy. The same tool also allowed the community to see extremely clearly what the liquidity setup was going into the launch.
There was the Alpha Vault, which Meteora created to solve LFG’s needs, allowing buyers with longer-term horizons to obtain tokens at discounted launch prices, by locking their liquidity to support the launch. This created long-term alignment for holders and projects, and also made the relationship between early and late-buyers PPP instead of PvP.
As part of the Sanctum launch, we also introduced Dynamic & Vesting airdrops, giving teams the flexibility to introduce vesting or bonuses on top of their regular airdrops to align over time.
Perhaps most importantly, the amazing Jupiter community rallied behind every project that launched on LFG, and collectively spent thousands of hours participating in townhalls and discussions across AMAs, Twitter Spaces, in Discord, on Planetary Calls and more. Projects that did not manage to launch but went through the entire voting process also benefited from a growth in reach.
What did not go so well?
We learnt a few key lessons from these few months of experimentation as well.
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We learnt that focusing all of the community’s energies on a single project for 1-2 months can lead to extremely high expectations on both sides. This led to some disappointment for both the community and projects in the instances where the price action during and after the launch were not as good as expected.
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We learnt that the demand for the LFG launchpad services from deserving projects far exceeds what the current processes can provide. The LFG process as it is with the voting process and all, is very thorough and detailed. It might even seem a bit slow when contrasted against a world where tens of thousands of tokens are launching daily. Given that projects often require more certainty around their launch dates, some fantastic projects weren’t able to align their timelines with ours and couldn’t launch with LFG.
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Finally, in some cases, even though there was a high degree of community activation within the Jupiter community during the launch process itself, it did not always translate into actual community and/or user growth for the projects.
Looking Forward: LFG V2
The team’s focus now is on productizing LFG — making it a platform any project can use without the need for voting. We have built some world-class tools already, such as the Jupiter Lock, Jupiter Distribute, ILM built with Meteora, and the Alpha Vault. Now, the goal is to bring them all together into one seamless platform for any project to utilise. Hopefully this will give solid, well-intentioned teams the opportunity to differentiate themselves in the crowded airdrop and presales meta by committing to a good token distribution/sale plan.
Of course we will continue to do it together with our community at the core. The Jupiter community has also grown significantly since LFG first launched. We have a large number of passionate and talented people in the community. The various WGs – CWG, Uplink and Catdets WG, together with the catdets and can decide which projects they want to promote. This shift is crucial in practice. We are enabling the community itself to play a major role in deciding which projects they want to help drive.
Sit tight, LFG V2 is coming and we will share more details on it over the next few weeks. Let’s continue to work together as one J.U.P to ensure its success!
