Jambo (J) Crypto Ecosystem: how to monetize Africa and make it Web3

Jambo (J) Crypto: Africa’s Web3 Dream or Risky Investment?

Let’s dig out what is a Jambo Crypto, how it works, why it’s made that way and bring up the burning question of «Should you invest in Jambo (J) Crypto?». 

This review is brought to you by Traders Union experts on crypto. 

What is the main idea behind Jambo (J) Crypto?  

Not going to bore you with technicalities: Jambo (J) Technologies sell phones that pretend to be a gateway into a closed Web3 ecosystem, like an iPhone to an iOS. Let’s dissect the buzzwords and find out the real deal behind it. 

If you look up «James Zhang» on Google most likely you’ll hit a famous fantasy illustrator’s wikipedia page, rather than tech CEO’s personal list of achievements. Name is really popular, and many of the James Zhangs are actually good investment professors, data scientists, but the one we’re looking at doesn’t want a direct link with his own creation and if you do enough digging, you can find him as the Africa Blockchain conference speaker. When you try to hit his Twitter or Linkedin networks, the best you get is 404, which is weird — why hide from the success when it comes to you? The only link that works is Jambo’s Youtube, but you won’t find a way to confirm their identity. Unlike other respectful James Zhangs, founder of Jambo (J) prefers «public anonymity»  

See for yourself, here’s a Linkedin URL to a Jambo company:

• https://www.linkedin.com/company/jambo-technology/

Let’s take a closer look at their Youtube channel. What you must know is that views on the videos can be bought, but often to mask this technique people tend to stay within the same view bracket. Around 2k to 6k, but you should really raise an eyebrow when you see a consistent 5k views on someone’s video publications. Here, the Jambo (J) Youtube channel fits the description. 

Youtube, Jambo Technologies channel. 

Over the course of 3 years Jambo (J) Technologies raised $35M: $5M at Public Sale, and $30M during Funding rounds, plus undisclosed amounts from 2 closed investment rounds. 

• In the 2022th Seed Round they got plenty of big names: Coinbase, Delphi Ventures, Yield Guild Games, Polygon Studios, and now defunct Alameda Research with Three Arrows Capital. 

• Series A yielded them $30M from Paradigm, Delphi Ventures, Pantera Capital, and funds from Tier 1 to Tier 5 with names like Gate.io and GuildFi present. 

• On March 15, 2024 they had an undisclosed investment round with WaterDrip Capital — not very transparent on Jambo (J) part. 

Token distribution of Jambo (J) Crypto looks like this: 

• 30% to early contributors, like early birds; Now, what you might know is that it means «+30% for the team to decide whom to pay»;   

• 15% to the team, for their efforts; 

• 27% to the treasury, which should be used to stabilize the price, pay out (J) token to holders and cover the future incentives. Again, this is «27% for the team to decide how to use Jambo (J) coins later», they might as well pat themselves on the back;    

• 10% for the airdrop; 

• 3% for liquidity providers, which is weird. Liquidity providers are the guys responsible for a stable price movement. If you don’t give them enough tokens, or give too much, the price would fluctuate. 

• 15% for the community for raw usage: to mine it out, to receive as a reward, and so on. 

• Let’s boil it down: effectively, 72% of coins are controlled by the team, there’s no intermediaries here, the community gets 15% hands down. 

Just recently Jambo Technologies announced ~850,000 Jambo-phones were pre-ordered at $99 per unit for a whopping $85M in revenue with 9M new wallets generated. A bit too much numbers, let’s break them down: 

• 850,000 specialized Jambo (J) phones with pre-installed apps are being distributed at what seems to be a loss-price. Just like in the Printer-Ink situation, where the main item is shipped at a loss to make people buy pricey Ink over and over;

• Each Jambo (J) phone costs $99, has pre-installed Web 3 apps and allows users to earn J token inside the ecosystem;

• These 850,000 phones generated, in raw numbers, $85M in revenue for Jambo Technologies. 

What Does the key idea behind Jambo (J) Crypto sound like? «You got a Jambo (J) phone, you got a job». All the promotional videos featuring the phone focus on music, dancing and people being in shock, but neither actually reveals any detail or says about how that phone feels, how it works, everything tries to distract you from what it actually is. 

Photo of Jambo (J) Phone unboxing from @DefiPrince88 at Twitter (X).

Key features behind the Jambo (J) Crypto: how it works and why  

Jambo (J) Coin is built on the Solana network and uses SPL token standard to run, which effectively means it depends on the network's own validators and will stop during «Solana business day offs». It is supported by every Solana-compatible wallet right from the start, and runs on the same chain as pump.fun memecoins.

$J Token: Use Cases, Staking & where to buy it

As of March 12, 2025, Jambo (J) coin is traded at 38 different exchange platforms, among them are Bitget, Kucoin, OKX, ByBit, MEXC and Gate.IO. Only 4 out of top 9 platforms by the volume who trade Jambo (J) coin actually have decent liquidity score by CMC, which means the 5 others don’t have enough money to fuel the Jambo (J) Coin trading, which only further multiplies volatility and price swings. 

Top 9 CEX by the trading volume of Jambo Coin. 

Here’s how Jambo (J) Crypto works: 

1. Jambowallet and Jambo (J) Phone rewards you with Jambo (J) coin for watching ads and doing marketing tasks for the Jambo Technologies; There are no staking pools at the start, because it is harder to rugpull a token when it has any of them; 

2. Main Jambo coin utility is being used as a marketing reward. There is no governance, no staking, no technical utility, it is what it is — a marketing reward token; 

The promises made by Jambo Technologies about the Jambo Token: 

1. The Git.Book — which team tries to pass as a whitepaper — tells that Jambo (J) coin will be used in future to pay for item discounts; 

2. Liquidity Pools, to be launched later on, would grant «exclusive opportunities and quests», «discounts to physical products», «exclusive access to partner token or NFT sales, similar to popular launchpads», right to take part in airdrops and receive rewards with partnered tokens for «anti-sybil verified Jambo (J) users», and «automatic entry for phone»;

3. Effectively, none of this is even near to be implemented after 3 years of development. Mind that Ethereum had EVM’s, dApps and smart-contracts in the same timeframe developed by a bunch of guys in their spare time, with Vitalik Buterin ensuring nobody screws over the ecosystem.    

CryptoRank, total returns on investment for all parties involved in Jambo.   

On a Jambo Satellite for Easier Cellular Phone Network Access. 

• At some point rumours started to spread about Jambo (J) Technologies launching a real-world satellite to foster cellular network connection for their mobile users who bought the Jambo phone. 

• Launching a satellite, a single one, costs between $10M to $400M. Launching a weather satellite, that just gets weather data, costs $250M, and you also have to pay $1.5B a year for bandwidth.  

• Jambo had $35M from investments, which comes with a requirement to make profit, and an additional $85M from alleged sale of the phones. Launching a single satellite would blow the entire budget to smithereens. 

The Jambo Phone Con

What matters here is wording: on the main page it says «Phone Orders», not «sold», «delivered» or «purchased». You know where technicalities matter? In court. 

Jambo.Technology main page, March 12, 2025.

Now let’s dig even deeper. Here’s the specs of the Jambo Phone announced on https://www.jambo.technology/ by a cutesy asian guy with weird moving lips: 

• 4G;

• 12 GB RAM with no asterisk about it being partially virtual; 

• 128 GB onboard storage;

• «Opticor» «power» CPU;

• 3 camera bumps; 

• 6.75 display.

The closest one that resembles this phone is Lava Yuva Star 4, but it is a little too short on RAM and storage: 4 (+4 virtual) and 64 GB storage priced at ~$70 to ~$90. 

Let’s ask AI’s, because at this point you gotta beat fire with fire: 

Grok 3, on Jambo Phone Bill of Materials. 

Now riddle this: total number of Jambo (J) Youtube Subscribers are 14k, Twitter gets about 466k users on top of that, plus ex-BTC pop-star personal IG recommendations to 146k followers. But somehow, Jambo boasts 850k preorders for a $99 phone that is yet to be delivered across 128 countries. 

Twitter users on Jambo phone IMEIs being repurposed.

To put that in perspective: they’ve had to either manufacture a custom Web3 phone — mind that the real Web3 Solana-phone is at least $500 — repurpose an existing phone model, distribute it across 128 different local supply chains and somehow convince every person in that chain to do business at a loss because there’s multiple shipping policies. 

Jambo Phone at eBay from a seller with non-connected item listings.

You can actually find a Jambo phone on eBay, at ~50$ plus «Shipping not specified» from sellers who deal in trinkets and «nice-to-haves», but not phones.     

Rough math tells that, in total, Jambo got an influx of about $124M from investment and phone sales. It took them 3 years to come up with a 99$ phone that looks like Xiaomi Redmi Note 14 ripoff — no shame in that, cool phone, decent specs, why are they selling it with a direct incentive to bypass a 30% cut from the Play Market? It also tries to bypass KYC, labeling it as «unnecessary», but the thing with KYC is that it’s necessary evil to prevent market manipulation by bots. 

Keep in mind that Xiaomi Redmi 14 MSRP is ~$200. Incentive is clear as blue sky: buy a $99 phone and make more money. Remember the old saying? «If something looks too good to be true — it is».   

Jambo.Technologies trying to move away from industry-standard KYC, Twitter (X).

You see, a 30% cut for the marketplaces isn't that fair, but it’s there to ensure everyone obeys the rules in the same way. Last time Fortnite tried to bypass it with crypto NFT’s the whole Play/App Market got on its toes and it ended with a fierce lawsuit. But it all boils down to profit: big players don’t want to share profits, yet, they should. 

Jambo Technologies trying to sell App Stores cut bypass as a feature.

There are 3 options with Jambo phone: 

1. It tries to bypass market regulations and draw in casino/gambling part of the crypto market, which would benefit from low fees for in-app transactions; 

2. The phone is Printer-and-Ink situation, which means Jambo Technologies have to somehow extract additional value out of users by force, making them pay in subscriptions, selling their data, using predatory in-phone ads, etc; 

3. The phones are a distraction from a much bigger problem. 

Let’s take a look at the Jambo (J) Coin price 

Finally, after 3 years in the making, Jambo launched IEO at Bitget, starting at $0.5 per coin, followed by a Launchpool on Gate.io with an average reward of 8 Jambo tokens per person. 

What could go wrong? 

CoinMarketCap, Jambo Coin. 

Token loses 80% of it's value in 27d after initial listing, makes a jumpscare to tickle the price lows after the start so it'll look like an ATH and then goes on nosediving the dust for another month, losing 50% more of total evaluation.

Here’s what happens on the price chart side of things for the Jambo Crypto Token? 

1. Jambo Coin loses 80% of its value over the course of 27 days after the listing; 

2. Price makes a jumpscare, trying to make it look like a legit upwards run;

3. Then selling pressure, accumulated by people who got into the Jambo ecosystem, the team itself and «early birds» convince price to stay low as possible;     

4. The red lines you see on the right side of the chart are the price levels where the selling pressure is the strongest. 

TradingView, J/USDT price graph, 1D time interval. 

Jambo Crypto Token on Solana: 5 investment rounds, $129M and 3 years later they promise a $99 phone that comes with a promise to make you a true Web3 degen and let you earn Jambo in the process. And a satellite for advanced cellular connection for their audience. 

What do experts at Traders Union think about Jambo crypto? 

«One of many disappointing things about Jambo is whom they target. People who buy the Jambo phone effectively fuel the perpetual rugpull. Judging by the data, Jambo wasn’t made to make you rich, nor does it have anything to do with legitimate crypto projects. There’s no real use case or utility beyond marketing. You better invest elsewhere, but you can, however, short this asset if you wish. Be aware of risks — the coin’s price is in the lower part of the spectrum already».