Jito

Jito is a Solana project best known for two things: MEV tools and liquid staking. It has no link to the Japanese word or the Jain trade group with the same name. Jito makes the software that lets Solana validators sell the best spots in a block to the highest bidder. It also issues JitoSOL, a token you get for staking SOL. JitoSOL earns staking rewards plus a share of those bids. Jito has since added BAM, a new way to build blocks, and JTX, a trading app that opened in July 2026. It now calls itself "the market layer of Solana". Holders of the JTO token vote on how Jito is run.

How Jito works: MEV tips, bundles and the Block Engine

Jito turns the race for position inside a Solana block into an auction. MEV, short for maximum extractable value, is the profit a trader can make from where a transaction lands in a block. Traders send Jito a "bundle" of transactions with a tip attached. The Jito Block Engine picks the highest-paying bundles and passes them to the validator building the block. The tips are then shared between validators and the people who stake with them.

A Jito bundle holds up to five transactions that run in order and either all succeed or all fail, according to Jito's developer docs. That all-or-nothing rule is why trading bots, arbitrage desks and Telegram trading apps use bundles. A two-step trade can't be left half done.

A Jito tip is separate from a Solana priority fee. The priority fee is paid to the network to move a transaction up the queue. The tip is a bid in Jito's own auction. Jito's docs set a minimum tip of 1,000 lamports for bundles and advise setting both a tip and a priority fee when the network is busy.

Validators take part by running Jito-Solana, a modified version of the Agave validator client, and connecting it to the Block Engine. Tips pile up over each epoch, which lasts about two days. A separate Jito system called TipRouter then works out who is owed what and pays it out.

What is JitoSOL? Liquid staking with MEV rewards

JitoSOL is the token you receive when you stake SOL through Jito. It stands for your share of a large pool of staked SOL. The pool earns normal Solana staking rewards plus MEV tips, so JitoSOL has two sources of income. You never claim rewards. The amount of SOL each JitoSOL can be redeemed for rises over time instead.

Because JitoSOL is an ordinary Solana token, you can keep using it while it earns. Jito's site lists Kamino Finance KMNO$0.038+4.6%, Raydium, Orca and Meteora among the apps that accept it, as collateral for loans or as liquidity in trading pools. This is the main difference from native staking, where your SOL sits locked with one validator.

JitoSOL fees and yield

JitoSOL charges a management fee of 4% of the rewards the pool earns, per Jito's FAQ. Jito puts that at about 0.3% of your deposit per year. The fee is taken after each validator's own commission.

The yield moves with the network. Staking rewards follow Solana's inflation schedule, and MEV tips rise and fall with trading activity. A quiet market means fewer tips. A Jito governance proposal from August 2026 put JitoSOL at roughly 5.13% a year at that time. You can check the live rate against other pools on our stake pool comparison.

How to unstake JitoSOL

You have two ways out. You can unstake on Jito's site, which costs a 0.1% fee and takes up to one epoch, about two days. Or you can sell JitoSOL for SOL on an exchange such as Jupiter JUP$0.296-2.6%, which is instant but depends on the market price. Jito's FAQ suggests the swap for most people and the direct unstake for very large amounts.

How StakeNet chooses validators for the JitoSOL pool

StakeNet is the on-chain program that decides which validators receive the pool's SOL. No person picks them. Every validator is scored against public rules. The pool's SOL is then split evenly between those that pass. The set can hold up to 400 validators, and the scores are redone every ten epochs.

The rules reward low fees and steady work. A validator must keep its staking commission at 5% or less and its MEV commission at 10% or less. It must also vote on time, stay out of the group of largest validators and run Jito's BAM client.

Jito set out the full process in an August 2026 post on how the pool hands out stake. That post put the set at a little over 300 validators.

One change is under way. JTO holders have passed JIP-39, a proposal from August 2026. It moves a quarter of the pool to validators run by Jito itself. Those validators charge no commission and pass their block rewards on to JitoSOL holders. The aim is a slightly higher yield for holders.

The cost is plain too. A quarter of the pool will sit with one operator, and the proposal accepts that the other validators in the pool will earn less.

BAM: Jito's Block Assembly Marketplace

BAM is Jito's newer system for building Solana blocks. It moves the job of ordering trades into sealed hardware, so nobody can see or reorder them before they run. Jito first showed BAM in July 2025. By early October 2026, validators holding 37% of all staked SOL were using it, according to the BAM changelog.

The sealed hardware is called a Trusted Execution Environment, or TEE. Think of it as a locked room inside a chip. BAM nodes put trades in order inside that room and hand the list to the validator. Keeping orders hidden until they run is meant to stop sandwich attacks. In a sandwich, a bot trades just before and just after you to profit from your order.

BAM also lets apps set their own ordering rules through "plugins". The launch post gave one example: letting market makers cancel stale quotes before other traders can hit them.

In September 2026 Jito switched on BAM preconfirmations. This is a fast data feed of what a BAM validator has agreed to run next. It is sold through Helius hSOL$125.09-1.8% and Triton. We covered the launch in our report on BAM preconfirmations.

BAM is not finished. Its ordering code is still closed. Jito wrote in late September 2026 that "trust in BAM still resides on Jito's reputation". The attestations post lists what is left to do. First come proofs that each node runs the right code. Then the code itself is to be made public. Neither step has a date. Our news piece on the attestation design has more detail.

JTX: Jito's self-custody trading platform

JTX is a trading app built by Jito Labs that runs on Solana and leaves your funds in your own wallet. It opened to all users on 21 July 2026, per the launch announcement. JTX offers spot trading with limit orders, take-profit and stop-loss orders, and orders split over time.

Jito is open that JTX is aimed at experienced traders. Its post explaining the product says the interface "assumes competence" and will not explain basics. Markets at launch included SOL, memecoins and tokenized stocks and funds. Perpetual futures, prediction markets and a mobile app are planned and have no dates yet. For background, see our guide to JTX.

Jito restaking, vaults and TipRouter

Jito Restaking lets you put tokens that are already staked, such as JitoSOL, to work a second time. You deposit them in a vault. The vault lends their security to an outside service and gives you a receipt token in return. Jito calls these services node consensus networks. One of them is Jito's own TipRouter, which calculates MEV tip payouts.

Restaking is a small and riskier corner of Jito. Withdrawals take two epochs, and the restaking docs warn that deposits can be slashed, meaning partly taken away, if an operator breaks a network's rules. The protocol charges a 4% fee on rewards and 0.1% on withdrawals. Each vault can add its own fees.

JTO token: governance, revenue and buybacks

JTO is Jito's governance token. Holders vote on JitoSOL's fees, the StakeNet rules and how the DAO's funds are spent. The supply is capped at one billion JTO. A tenth of it was set aside as an airdrop for early users, according to the token announcement.

The DAO collects what the protocol earns. That covers the JitoSOL fee and a cut of MEV tips. Jito charges a 6% fee on Block Engine tips. Half of it used to go to Jito Labs. A vote in August 2025 sent all of it to the DAO.

JTX adds a new stream. Under a proposal called JIP-38, four fifths of JTX trading fees go to the DAO. The DAO has pledged to spend all of that share on buying JTO in the open market and burning it. The pledge lasts at least a year, and holders are due to review it late in 2027.

JTO does not pay holders a share of income directly. Votes decide whether the money goes to buybacks or to growth. Lately it has gone to growth. The DAO has been paying its protocol income to validators as a reward for moving to BAM. The latest vote keeps that reward at the full rate to the end of 2026, then phases it out over the following six months. We looked at the effect in our coverage of Jito's second-quarter revenue.

Who Jito is for

Jito serves four different groups, and each uses a different product.

SOL holders who want staking income and a token they can still spend or borrow against are the audience for JitoSOL. It suits you less if you want to choose your own validator, or if you don't want any smart contract between you and your stake.

Bot builders and trading desks use bundles when a trade must land in full and in order. Validators run Jito's client to earn tips, and they need BAM to qualify for JitoSOL stake. Active traders who already know order types are the audience for JTX. Beginners are not, by Jito's own account.

Is JitoSOL safe? Audits, custody and risks

JitoSOL keeps you in control of your SOL and runs on audited code, but it is not free of risk. Jito does not hold your SOL. The pool uses the shared stake pool program that many Solana staking tokens rely on. Jito's docs say that if Jito went away, holders could still pull their SOL out from the validators.

The audits cover that shared program. Jito's deployed programs page lists reviews by Quantstamp, Neodyme and Kudelski. The program can still be changed. The Solana explorer shows its upgrade key is a Squads multisig, a wallet that needs several people to sign. Jito's docs say those signers are a group of Solana staking projects. Jito Restaking had its own audits, by OtterSec, Offside Labs and Certora.

Jito's own programs need a closer look. The StakeNet Steward program moves the pool's stake between validators, and it can be changed too. The explorer shows one address as its upgrade key and does not label it a multisig. We could not confirm who controls that address. The Jito DAO holds the pool's manager role, which covers fees and the choice of validators.

Other risks are worth knowing:

• The market price of JitoSOL can dip below what it can be redeemed for when many holders sell at once. Unstaking on Jito's site always pays the full rate, but takes up to an epoch.
• MEV income is not promised. It falls when trading is quiet.
• BAM relies on TEE chips and on code that outsiders can't yet read.
• Using JitoSOL as loan collateral, or in restaking, adds the risk of being liquidated or slashed.

Jito has also had to undo one of its own features. The Block Engine once offered a public view of trades waiting to run, known as a mempool. Bots used it to sandwich ordinary traders. On 8 March 2024 Jito Labs said it would switch the feature off, as Blockworks reported.

Jito vs Marinade and native staking

JitoSOL is the option built around MEV income and wide use across Solana apps. The other choices differ mainly in whether you get a token at all, and in who picks the validators.

Marinade MNDE$0.026+0.9% issues its own token, mSOL. It also offers native staking, where your SOL stays in your own stake accounts and no pool program sits in between. Marinade's own comparison presents that as its main difference from Jito.

Staking direct with one validator is the simplest route. You pay no pool fee and you don't rely on a pool program. In return your SOL is locked until you unstake, and you depend on one operator.

Solana Compass is not neutral here. We run a validator and our own liquid staking token, so we compete with Jito for stake. You can see how we do it on our staking page.

Jito Labs, the Jito Foundation and key dates

Jito is made up of two bodies. Jito Labs is the company that builds the validator client, the Block Engine, BAM and JTX. The Jito Foundation, set up in the Cayman Islands, carries out the decisions of JTO holders. Lucas Bruder is co-founder and CEO of Jito Labs.

The main dates in Jito's history:

• 2021: Jito Labs starts work on Solana MEV software.
• November 2023: the JTO token and its airdrop are announced.
• March 2024: Jito Labs suspends the Block Engine mempool.
• July 2025: BAM is announced. It reaches mainnet that September.
• July 2026: JTX opens to all users, and JIP-38 ties its fees to JTO buybacks.
• September 2026: BAM preconfirmations go live.
• October 2026: Jito said BAM nodes would pause during Solana's Alpenglow upgrade, with validators falling back to the Block Engine. See our coverage of the plan.