Solana's Jupiter Buys DRiP Haus, DeFi Exchange's First NFT Play

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) may be well off their frothy heights, but don't tell that to Jupiter. Solana's top DeFi exchange just brought digital collectibles platform DRiP Haus into its orbit.

The acquisition is part of Jupiter's push to become what Jupiter's Kash Dhanda calls the "Solana super app:" a home not only for traders of financial instruments like swaps and perps, but for digital culture connoisseurs too.

"We don't believe it," Dhanda said of the NFT doomsayers. "We think NFTs are here for the long term."

Built from the bricks of the short-lived Solana store, DRiP Haus survived the NFT market's brutal downturn as a digital collectibles distribution hub. Instead of trading it focuses on disseminating: Startups across Solanaland spin up and send out their visual campaigns on DRiP, according to Dhanda, who estimates it now creates the vast majority of Solana NFTs that "aren't spam."

Dhanda and DRiP Labs founder Vibhu Norby both declined to state how much Jupiter paid in the all-cash deal. A person familiar with the deal estimated it at two times the funds raised. The startup previously raised $11.5 million from venture investors.

Jupiter co-founder Meow hinted at the acquisition in late February during his campaign to defer a multi-million dollar token payday, which yields more JUP for him later while funding token incentive programs for acqui-hired teams now. Norby confirmed his team will be getting tokens from the incentives program.

Half of DRiP's eight-person team will continue working on the distribution platform, while the other half will focus on bolstering Jupiter's currently nonexistent NFT capabilities, most critically by adding a swaps router to the DeFi exchange's homepage.

Norby will oversee DRiP from an "executive, strategic point of view" from within Jupiter. While the DRiP brand will remain separate, Norby said its visual identity will be reworked to align more closely with the new mothership. He's also working on building a "really, really excellent NFT experience" within Jupiter's mobile app.