Jito (JTO & JitoSOL)

Jito is the DAO that governs the dominant slice of Solana's value-capture stack: the network's largest liquid-staking token (JitoSOL), the MEV-enabled validator client that most of Solana's stake runs, and the block-building marketplace that sequences much of its transaction flow. Where Lido and Rocket Pool govern liquid staking and EigenLayer governs restaking, Jito is the rare DAO whose treasury sits astride an entire chain's MEV supply chain – client, block engine, tips, and restaking – making it a distinctive study in governing revenue-generating infrastructure rather than a single protocol.

JitoSOL: liquid staking with MEV

JitoSOL is a non-custodial liquid-staking token: deposit SOL, receive JitoSOL, and keep a liquid, DeFi-composable claim that accrues both ordinary staking yield and a share of the MEV rewards Jito's validators earn. It is Solana's largest liquid-staking token, with on the order of 14.5 million SOL (~$2.9B) staked through the pool as of 2025-2026 (Solana Compass).

Delegation is not hand-managed. Jito runs StakeNet – a blend of on-chain programs and off-chain "keepers", anchored by the Steward Program – to score validators and rebalance JitoSOL's stake across them automatically, on-chain and auditably. Crucially, every StakeNet parameter (delegation criteria, safety thresholds, caps) is set by Jito DAO governance, so the community, not a private operator, controls where the largest Solana stake pool points. The scoring-formula approach contrasts with fellow Solana LST DAO Marinade, which instead auctions its stake to the validators that bid the highest yield.

The Jito-Solana client, Block Engine & tips

The other half of Jito is MEV infrastructure. The Jito-Solana validator client is an MEV-enabled fork of Solana's Agave client; by 2025 it was run by roughly 90%+ of Solana's staked SOL (~95% of validators), making it the network's de-facto standard (GetBlock).

Around it sits an off-chain Block Engine: searchers submit bundles – atomic, explicitly-ordered groups of transactions – and bid tips for inclusion, and the winning bundles are forwarded to the leader. Tips flow back to stakers and validators through the on-chain Tip Distribution Program. The scale is large: heading into 2025, Jito tips had paid out roughly $674 million to stakers and validators and accounted for close to half of Solana's real economic value (Crypto Briefing). In July 2025 Jito announced the Block Assembly Marketplace (BAM), a verifiable, privacy-preserving, programmable block-building architecture that runs block construction inside Trusted Execution Environments – borrowing the design of Ethereum's Flashbots BuilderNet.

What the Jito DAO governs

JTO is a fixed-supply governance token (1 billion, airdropped 7 December 2023). Holders draft Jito Improvement Proposals (JIPs) on the governance forum and vote token-weighted through Solana's SPL Governance (Realms), with a DAO multisig enacting passed proposals. Per the governance docs, JTO controls three concrete levers:

• StakeNet parameters – the delegation strategy behind JitoSOL's multi-billion-dollar stake distribution.
• TipRouter NCN parameters – the node-consensus network that computes and distributes MEV tips.
• The DAO treasury – the JTO held by the DAO plus the fees generated by JitoSOL and restaking.

Because a JitoSOL depositor need not hold JTO – and a JTO holder need not stake – Jito is a clean example of the token-weighted-voting model applied to critical shared infrastructure: influence over Solana's staking and MEV plumbing is priced, transferable, and accrues to whoever accumulates the most JTO.

TipRouter and Jito (Re)staking

TipRouter (live since February 2025) is itself built on Jito's newer product line: Jito (Re)staking. Restaking lets staked SPL assets be re-pledged to secure additional Node Consensus Networks (NCNs), with vault positions represented by transferable Vault Receipt Tokens (VRTs); the programs are audited by Certora, Offside and OtterSec and secure hundreds of millions in assets. TipRouter is the first flagship NCN – it decentralises the computation and distribution of Jito tips, replacing a trusted off-chain process. It charges a 6% fee on tips, split between Jito Labs and the DAO; in Q2 2025 that fee alone earned the DAO 22,391 SOL (~$4M).

Routing fees to the DAO

Through 2025 Jito's governance steadily redirected protocol revenue to the treasury and to token holders. JIP-24 proposed routing 100% of Block Engine fees (and future BAM fees) to the Jito DAO treasury. Separately, JIP-38 (passed 13 July 2025) directs 80% of fees from JTX – Jito's self-custody spot-trading platform – to the DAO, and commits 100% of the DAO's share to open-market JTO buybacks through Q4 2027, with the repurchased JTO burned. The result is a DAO increasingly funded by, and returning value from, the infrastructure it governs.

How Caper approaches this

Jito shows token-weighted governance at its most consequential: control over Solana's largest stake pool and its MEV pipeline goes to whoever holds the most $JTO, a freely tradeable token. It is a working design for a live revenue business, which a caper does not run and does not try to imitate.

A caper differs in who the deciding vote belongs to. A member's weight comes from the tokens they hold together with the soulbound votes they earn by casting ballots; buying or selling tokens earns none, and earned votes never move between wallets. Holdings still count, but a big bag alone can't capture control, because accumulating tokens does not absorb the votes other members have earned the way accumulating $JTO absorbs theirs.

The same weight sets a member's fair share of the treasury when they exit. And where Jito's treasury moves when a multisig enacts an off-chain-drafted JIP, a caper's treasury moves only through on-chain proposals that no signer enacts: once one passes, the caper's own market can still veto it if the price falls while it waits, and after that anyone can carry it out.

References

• Jito Foundation – Documentation Hub
• Jito – The JTO Governance Token
• Jito – StakeNet & the Steward Program
• Jito – (Re)staking overview
• Jito MEV – Tip Distribution Program
• JIP-24 – Jito DAO receives Block Engine & BAM fees
• CoinDesk – Jito proposes routing 100% of Block Engine fees to the DAO (5 Aug 2025)
• Helius – Block Assembly Marketplace (BAM)
• Solana Compass – Jito metrics