Jito

Jito is a group of Solana products that deal with how transactions are ordered and how staked SOL earns. Its website calls it the market layer of Solana and lists four parts: JitoSOL, a liquid staking token; BAM, a block-building system; JTO, the governance token; and JTX, a trading app. Most visitors searching for Jito want one of two things, the staking token or the bundle API that traders use to land transactions, and this page covers both.

Two organizations share the name. Jito Labs is the software company behind the Jito-Solana validator client, the block engine, ShredStream and JTX; its careers page lists roles in the US and Europe. The Jito Foundation is a Cayman Islands foundation company whose memorandum was adopted on 6 December 2023, with its registered office at FFP (Corporate Services) Limited in George Town. The foundation's governance documentation names two independent directors, Matt Shaw and Glenn Kennedy, an independent supervisor from FFP Corporate Services, and Webslinger as DAO administrator. The foundation operates the jito.network site and publishes its terms of use, which are governed by Cayman law.

Jito Labs does not list its founders or investors on the pages we opened, and this profile does not name them. BAM's page quotes Jito's CEO by first name only, as Lucas.

When you stake SOL through Jito you receive JitoSOL, a token that represents your share of a pool of staked SOL. Rewards are not paid out. Instead the JitoSOL exchange rate rises: at launch one JitoSOL equalled one SOL, and each token is now redeemable for more SOL as rewards build up. Jito's API put the pool at about 10.42 million SOL against 7.97 million JitoSOL on 24 October 2026, an exchange rate of roughly 1.31 SOL per token.

Holders earn from two sources. The first is ordinary Solana staking issuance, paid each epoch of about two days. The second is MEV: traders pay tips to validators running Jito's client to get their transactions ordered a certain way, and part of those tips flows to the validators' stakers. Jito's FAQ notes that MEV income swings with market activity, rising on volatile days and falling in quiet markets. Its API showed a trailing APY of about 4.76% on 24 October 2026; that figure moves daily and is not a promise.

Where the SOL is staked is decided by StakeNet, a set of on-chain programs. Its published delegation criteria require validators to run the Jito MEV client, keep validator commission at or below 5% and MEV commission at or below 10%, stay outside the superminority that controls a third of network stake, and vote on at least 97% of expected slots. Validators that pass are ranked by commission, MEV commission, age and voting record, and the top 400 each target an equal share. Directed staking, added through governance proposal JIP-27, lets large holders and approved protocols point stake at chosen validators, which is one reason Jito's API counted 665 validators holding pool stake in October 2026. Parameters can be inspected on-chain and changed by JTO governance.

JitoSOL is used across Solana DeFi as collateral and in liquidity pools. For how the token's yield and trading depth compare with other staking tokens, see how Jito compares with other liquid staking providers.

The second thing Jito is known for is its bundle API. A bundle, in Jito Labs' documentation, is a list of up to 5 transactions that execute sequentially and atomically: in the listed order, inside the same slot, and either all succeed or none do. Traders send bundles to Jito's block engine, which simulates them and passes the most profitable combinations to validators running the Jito-Solana client. Each bundle carries a tip, and Jito enforces a minimum tip of 1,000 lamports, a floor the docs warn is often too low when demand is high. Jito also offers ShredStream, a feed that delivers block data to traders with lower latency.

BAM, short for Block Assembly Marketplace, is the newer system. Jito describes it as block building in which transactions stay private until execution inside trusted execution environments, with signed attestations that blocks followed the published ordering rules, and with plugins that let applications set their own sequencing logic. In its April 2026 update the Jito Foundation said BAM validators held about 28% of total Solana stake at the end of the first quarter, and about 118 million SOL across 344 validators on 30 April 2026. Governance proposal JIP-28 ties part of JitoSOL's delegation to validators running BAM.

JTX is Jito Labs' trading app for Solana. Its site lists spot trading with limit, take-profit, stop-loss and TWAP orders, and names perpetual futures and prediction markets as coming next.

JitoSOL's fees are set by JTO governance and published in the FAQ. They come out of rewards, not out of your deposit, apart from the direct unstaking fee.

On the revenue side, Jito's JTO page says the DAO treasury receives the JitoSOL management fee and 5.7% of all Jito tips. Governance proposal JIP-16 added a 1.5% DAO share of priority fees distributed through Jito's TipRouter.

JitoSOL does not use a custom contract. It runs on the Solana Program Library stake pool program at SPoo1Ku8WFXoNDMHPsrGSTSG1Y47rzgn41SLUNakuHy, the same program used by other Solana stake pools. Jito's security page lists three audits of that program, by Quantstamp, Neodyme and Kudelski, with the commit hashes reviewed. It also says the program's upgrade keys belong to a committee of Solana staking ecosystem participants, not to Jito. An audit of the program is not a guarantee about Jito's own code, such as StakeNet or the Interceptor program.

Custody stays on-chain. Jito's docs state that it has no access to deposited SOL and that holders could still withdraw from validators if Jito disappeared. The Jito DAO holds the pool's manager role, which covers validator selection and fees, and StakeNet carries out the selection. That means governance can change fees and delegation rules, but cannot move the pooled SOL.

We found no hack, insolvency or halt of JitoSOL withdrawals in the documentation and announcements reviewed for this profile in October 2026. Jito does not publish an insurance fund for JitoSOL, and none of the pages we opened describes a public bug bounty.

The main risks are ones every liquid staking token shares, plus some that are specific to Jito's position on Solana.

• Market price risk: JitoSOL can trade below its redemption value on DEXs during sell-offs, which matters if you plan to exit instantly instead of waiting for direct unstaking. For how that played out with other tokens, see our report on a liquid staking token depeg.
• Software risk: a bug in the stake pool program, StakeNet or the Interceptor could affect deposits. The stake pool program is audited; the docs do not list audits for the Jito-specific programs.
• Governance risk: JTO holders set fees and delegation rules. The foundation's own record shows the DAO once could not reach its 30 million JTO quorum, and its Security Council lowered quorum to 10 million in early 2024.
• Concentration: Jito software sits under a large share of Solana's stake. Jito's November 2024 governance note put validators running Jito-Solana at over 90% of network stake weight. A fault in that software would reach well beyond JitoSOL holders.
• Slashing: Solana does not currently slash stake, and Jito's FAQ names massive slashing as one of the few ways JitoSOL could lose value against SOL. That could change if the network adds slashing.

To stake, connect a Solana wallet such as Phantom or Solflare on jito.network/staking and deposit SOL; JitoSOL arrives at once and starts accruing. You can also buy JitoSOL on a DEX, and Jito's docs include guides for Fireblocks and Squads users. Depositing an existing stake account goes through the Interceptor program, which holds the new JitoSOL for 10 hours before releasing it.

There are two ways out. The quick one is to sell JitoSOL for SOL or another token through Jupiter, which the Jito site builds into its unstake tab; you pay the market spread. The slower one is direct unstaking: Jito moves your share into a stake account in your wallet, you deactivate it, and after the epoch ends, up to about two days later, you withdraw SOL. That route costs a flat 0.1% and has no slippage. Jito's guide suggests it for large amounts or when DEX liquidity is thin.

The staking interface is a website that connects to your own wallet, with no account or identity check. The foundation's terms bar sanctioned persons and anyone based in a country under UN, US, EU or UK sanctions, and they route disputes to arbitration in the Cayman Islands. Some exchanges and custodians offer JitoSOL to their own customers, and the foundation announced in April 2026 that it had signed a memorandum of understanding with KODA, a Korean digital asset custodian.

Help is self-serve: the docs include FAQs and a troubleshooting page, Jito Labs runs a Discord for validators and searchers, and the foundation lists X and Telegram. The governance forum is at forum.jito.network. Jito publishes the JitoSOL mint address in its docs; checking it before buying is the simplest guard against fake tokens with the same name.

The dates below come from Jito's own blog, governance documents and docs.

• October 2022: Jito Labs announces that its Jito-Solana validator client is open source.
• 27 November 2023: the Jito Foundation announces the JTO governance token, with 10% of supply for an airdrop and 24.3% for the DAO on Realms. JitoSOL then held 6.8 million SOL.
• 6 December 2023: the Jito Foundation's amended memorandum of association is adopted in the Cayman Islands.
• January 2024: the foundation delegates 12 million JTO of voting power to 17 delegates, and the Security Council lowers quorum from 30 million to 10 million JTO.
• November 2024: Jito's governance note puts JitoSOL at 14 million SOL.
• Later proposals, undated in the docs: JitoSOL delegation shifts toward BAM validators (JIP-28), directed staking is added (JIP-27) and the active validator set grows from 200 to 400 (JIP-25).
• April 2026: BAM reaches about 28% of Solana stake; Maker Priority enters testing as BAM's first plugin.
• May 2026: Jito publishes why it is building JTX, its trading app.