Jupiter acquires majority stake in Moonshot, announces ‘Jupnet’ and $10 million AI fund at Catstanbul event
2025-01-26
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Solana DEX aggregator Jupiter made a number of major announcements at its 'Catstanbul 2025' event, named after its Turkish locale and Jupiter's psuedonymous founder, 'Meow.' 
Jupiter, which recently distributed over $600 million to its community in a 'Jupuary' airdrop, debuted a 'V2' redesign of its platform, declaring that the platform is once again in beta as new features are added throughout the platform. The new features include a "...real time slippage estimator, a brand new ultra mode, smart trigger orders and many, many more," according to Meow. "Everything announced here will be rolled out over [the] next couple of weeks."
Jupiter's Ultra Mode promises to be "10x cheaper, 10x better" than competing options, offering "real-time slippage estimation, dynamic priority fees, optimised transaction landing," and a new security tool that protects user assets dubbed "Jupiter Shield." 
Jupiter also introduced 'Jupnet,' an omnichain network that "aims to aggregate all of crypto in one single decentralized ledger for maximum ease of use for users and developers," according to Jupiter's announcement. The network is currently in early testnet, with the first public beta coming "in the next couple of months." 
The Jupnet proposal introduces decentralized and independent validators that would create a single source of truth across many blockchains, but could also execute transactions on different blockchains. 
"For Jupnet, we envision a world where one account can access all chains, all currencies and all commodities, aka the 1A3C vision," the announcement states. 
AI and Memecoin Moves
Aside from the platform updates, Jupiter made major moves in the increasingly-hot AI and memecoin sectors. 
Jupiter announced early Saturday its acquisition of a majority stake in the memecoin platform Moonshot, a Pump.fun competitor which rocketed up the Apple App Store charts following the launch of Donald Trump and his wife Melania's memecoins. 
"The team is amongst the smartest, most driven group of people i have ever met & it has been incredibly fun jamming on the future of memes together," wrote Meow on X. The value of the deal was not immediately disclosed. 
Regarding AI, Jupiter announced the launch of a $10 million 'Magic Fund' that seeks to support open-source AI development in conjunction with Eliza Labs, the team behind the AI agent project ai16z. 
"We are accelerating ambitious founders building [good tech,]" Eliza Labs founder Shaw Walters said on X. Walters also previewed a 'v2' of the ElizaOS platform, with a Research Preview launching in March and a public launch slated for April. 
Also at the event, AI agent platform Virtuals announced its expansion to Solana. Virtuals originally launched on Coinbase's Base Ethereum Layer 2 network. Virtuals also announced a number of initiatives meant to support developers and initiatives across Solana and Base. 
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