Jupiter Team Suspends DAO Voting Until 2026 Amid Community Backlash

The team behind the **DEX** aggregator on **Solana** called Jupiter has suspended voting within its **DAO** until 2026, as announced by Chief Operating Officer Khash Danda. This decision comes in response to significant criticism from the community.

DAO participants accused the project team of undermining decentralization. They claimed that the developers were using large amounts of JUP tokens to sway voting outcomes.

On June 6, a community member known as BuddyChaddi highlighted a wallet belonging to a member of the Jupiter team, which had utilized over 24 million JUP to vote on a recent proposal.

*“I have no issue with the team holding their share. The problem is that it’s too large to influence the DAO,”* he stated on the governance forum.

Another member, Thisisfun, echoed this sentiment. He *pointed out* that team members themselves were crafting governance proposals and had the ability to ensure favorable outcomes.

Co-founder of the project, going by the name weremeow, *confirmed* that the team’s locked tokens could indeed be used for voting.

According to him, he and another co-founder, Siong Ong, will step back from governance participation. However, a third co-founder will continue to vote but will stop receiving rewards for staking.

The reasoning behind this decision was to concentrate on the project’s growth. Danda noted that the current governance structure was not functioning as intended, stating that the DAO has become “stuck in a feedback loop” that hinders decision-making and fosters discord within the community.

*“The window for defining the future of DeFi is open, but it won’t remain open for long. We must stay intensely focused on growth,”* Danda emphasized.

The suspension of voting will allow the team to concentrate on speed and development while rethinking the fundamental principles of the DAO. Danda promised that governance would return in 2026 with “a new approach that unifies rather than divides.”

He clarified that this pause would not affect staking rewards, and all previously funded working groups would continue their operations. The acceptance of new proposals is halted, and the community reserve will remain untouched until voting resumes. The team will finance project development from its own operational treasury.

*“I want to reiterate: this is not the end of governance, but rather a pause,”* Danda added.

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