If you wanted to build a toll booth on Solana, Jito already beat you to it. The protocol, which operates at the intersection of liquid staking and maximal extractable value infrastructure, has cemented itself as the closest thing Solana has to a monopoly on validator-level revenue capture.
As of early July 2026, Jito’s governance token JTO sits at a market cap of roughly $351 million, backed by a circulating supply of approximately 491 million tokens. Its MEV-optimized validator client is now running on more than 95% of Solana’s active stake, up from figures that sat between 60% and 94% in prior periods.
What Jito actually does, and why it prints money
Think of Jito as a two-sided business. On one side, it runs JitoSOL, a liquid staking token that lets holders earn staking yields without locking up their SOL permanently. On the other side, it operates MEV infrastructure that allows validators to capture tips from traders who want their transactions prioritized.
JitoSOL currently holds around $2.92 billion in total value locked, with more than 14.5 million SOL staked through the protocol.
