What is Jito (JTO)?
- Author
- CRYPTO PORT Editorial
- Published
- Updated
- Reading time
- 6 min
In short
Jito provides MEV infrastructure and liquid staking on Solana. Its validator client auctions bundles of transactions and shares the proceeds with validators and stakers. JTO is its governance token, distributed in December 2023.
Key points
- Ships a Solana validator client with a built-in auction for transaction bundles
- JitoSOL is a Solana liquid staking token whose yield includes MEV proceeds
- JTO is a governance token, distributed to users in December 2023
- The publicly accessible mempool service was discontinued in 2024
Definition
A project that auctions the value of transaction ordering during Solana block production and routes the proceeds back into staking rewards.
Whoever builds a block decides which transactions go in and in what order. For strategies such as arbitraging price differences across DEXs, that ordering translates directly into profit, and when bots flood the network competing for it, the chain carries a great deal of wasted load.
Jito's approach turns that value into an open auction. Transactions are submitted as bundles with bids, and the highest-paying bundles get placed in the block. Because competition moves to bidding rather than re-sending failed transactions, less junk traffic hits the network.
Auction proceeds go to the validator and are shared with stakers delegating to it. JitoSOL is the liquid staking token that captures those rewards, and it also circulates in DeFi as a receipt for the deposited SOL.
The project once ran a mempool service that exposed pending transactions, but shut it down in 2024 after it was used to sandwich users' trades. It is a well-known illustration of the conflicts of interest inherent in businesses that handle transaction ordering.
Watch out for
- · MEV activity sits close to behaviour that harms users' trades, and policy changes can reshape the revenue model
- · JitoSOL carries both smart contract and validator-operation risk, and its exchange rate against SOL is set by the market
- · JTO is a governance token, not a claim on staking rewards
Frequently asked questions
Is MEV bad for users?
It depends on the type. Arbitrage between venues helps keep prices consistent, but sandwiching a user's order to extract value gives that user a worse fill.