Jupiter Team Halts DAO Governance Amid Community Backlash

The team behind the DEX aggregator on Solana, Jupiter, has decided to suspend voting within its DAO until 2026, as announced by COO Kash Danda. This decision came in response to significant criticism from the community.

DAO members accused the project team of undermining decentralization, claiming that the developers were wielding large amounts of JUP tokens to sway voting outcomes.

On June 6, a community representative known as BuddyChaddi pointed out a wallet belonging to a member of the Jupiter team that had used over 24 million JUP tokens to vote on a recent proposal.

*“I have no issue with the team having a stake. The problem lies in the fact that it is too large, influencing the DAO,”* he stated on the governance forum.

Another participant, Thisisfun, echoed this sentiment, noting that team members are creating governance proposals themselves and have the ability to secure desired outcomes.

Jupiter’s co-founder, known as weremeow, confirmed that the team’s locked tokens can indeed be utilized for voting.

He mentioned that he and fellow co-founder Siong Ong would step back from governance participation. However, a third co-founder will continue to vote but will no longer receive staking rewards.

This decision was attributed to the need to pivot towards the project’s growth. According to Danda, the current governance structure is not functioning as intended, suggesting that the DAO is «stuck in a negative feedback loop» that hampers decision-making and creates discord within the community.

*“The window for defining the future of DeFi is open, but it won’t stay open for long. We need to be laser-focused on growth,”* Danda emphasized.

The suspension of voting aims to allow the team to concentrate on speed and development while rethinking the operational principles of the DAO. Danda assured that governance would return in 2026 with «a new approach that unites rather than divides.»

He clarified that this pause would not affect staking rewards, and all previously funded working groups would continue their activities. New proposals have been put on hold, and the community reserves will remain untouched until voting resumes. The team’s operational treasury will be used to fund the project’s development.

*“Let me reiterate: this is not the end for governance, but rather a pause,”* added Danda.

It’s worth noting that on June 5, Yuga Labs proposed to dissolve the ApeCoin DAO and establish a new structure for the development of the APE token ecosystem.