Jito (JTO)
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Price of Jito today in real time
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Historical price evolution of Jito
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Jito was born in 2021 when Lucas Bruder, a Computer Engineering graduate from Carnegie Mellon University with prior experience as an intern at Tesla working on the Model X and as an engineer at Built Robotics automating heavy machinery, co-founded Jito Labs in the United States alongside Zano Sherwani. Their objective was to develop high-performance MEV (Maximum Extractable Value) infrastructure for the Solana network. In December of that same year, the company completed its seed round raising $2.1 million.
Growth accelerated during 2022 with a $10 million Series A round in August, led by Multicoin Capital and Framework Ventures, with participation from Alameda Research. In October 2022, Jito Labs simultaneously launched the Jito-Solana Validator Client, a Solana validator client with integrated MEV, and JitoSOL, its liquid staking protocol. By September 2022, the Jito network already had 200 validators representing more than 15% of staked SOL.
During 2023, the project experienced exponential growth. The Jito-Solana client achieved a 60% share of Solana network stake weight, whilst MEV tips revenue rose from practically zero in 2022 to several hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars in 2023. In February 2023, Figment, one of the largest institutional staking providers, adopted Jito's MEV client. On 25th November 2023, the snapshot for the JTO airdrop was taken, targeted at long-term JitoSOL holders, JitoSOL users in DeFi protocols, Solana validators using the Jito-Solana client, and MEV searchers on the Jito network.
7th December 2023 marked a milestone with the launch of the JTO governance token, with a total supply of 1 billion tokens. 90 million JTO were distributed immediately in the airdrop plus an additional 10 million with one-year vesting, whilst 24.3% of the supply passed to direct DAO control through Realms. JTO opened at around $2.06 and reached its all-time high of $6.01 in its first month. On 3rd April 2024, JTO reached its post-launch all-time high of $4.87, coinciding with a period when MEV tips revenue exceeded $674 million annually, positioning Jito as one of the highest revenue-generating DeFi protocols on Solana. JitoSOL reached approximately 50% market share in liquid staking on the network.
Expansion continued on 25th July 2024 with the announcement of Jito (Re)staking, a platform designed so that any Solana SPL token can be used as collateral to provide economic security to decentralised services called NCNs (Node Consensus Networks). In July 2025, BAM (Block Assembly Marketplace) was launched, Jito's decentralised block assembly system that operates within Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) to guarantee transaction confidentiality and allows specialised plugins. On 16th October 2025, Jito Labs completed a $50 million strategic round led by a16z Crypto, raising total funding to $62 million.
The most recent developments include the launch of the 21Shares JitoSOL ETP (ticker: JSOL) on European exchanges on 17th December 2025, becoming the first European ETP entirely backed by JitoSOL. In January 2026, BAM surpassed 20% of Solana network stake weight with 88 million SOL distributed among 273 validators. During that same month, proposal JIP-24 was approved, which redirects 100% of Block Engine and BAM fees to the DAO treasury, projecting annual revenue of $15-50 million. Additionally, the DAO and the Jito Foundation signed a memorandum of understanding with Korean custodian KODA to enable regulated institutional access to JitoSOL in South Korea.
Jito operates on the Solana blockchain combining two main products: the Jito-Solana Validator Client and the JitoSOL liquid staking protocol. The Jito-Solana Validator Client is a modified version of Solana's standard validation software that incorporates a Block Engine, a hyperoptimised system for reordering transactions within each block. When traders specialised in MEV (Maximal Extractable Value) identify arbitrage or liquidation opportunities, they send transaction packages called "bundles" to the Block Engine along with tips to guarantee their inclusion and optimal order in the block. The system selects the most profitable bundles and distributes the tips between validators and users who have delegated their tokens. At the beginning of 2026, more than 95% of Solana's active stake was delegated to validators using this modified client, making Jito the dominant infrastructure of the network.
JitoSOL functions as the liquid staking token that represents SOL deposited in Jito's staking pool. The deposited funds are automatically delegated to MEV-enabled validators that use the Jito-Solana client, accumulating both traditional staking rewards and a portion of the captured MEV tips. Unlike other protocols that distribute yields as dividends, JitoSOL's value appreciates continuously against the underlying SOL, increasing the exchange ratio progressively. The JTO token acts as the ecosystem's governance token with a maximum supply of 1,000 million units, allowing holders to vote on protocol parameters, delegation strategies and DAO treasury allocation. The ecosystem is complemented by Jito (Re)staking, which allows using any Solana SPL token as collateral to secure additional decentralised services, and BAM (Block Assembly Marketplace), a decentralised block construction system that uses trusted execution environments (TEEs) to guarantee confidentiality before transaction execution.
Data verified against external sources. Some values may have changed since the last update.