A great franchise at a bad point in its cycle.
Jito is the largest liquid-staking token on Solana and the backbone of its MEV market. The franchise is not in question. What is in question is timing: MEV tips have fallen about 90% from the 2025 peak, so the cash reaching the token today is tiny, and the fix depends on a value-capture upgrade that is not fully live yet.
What it is
Jito does two things. It runs JitoSOL, the largest liquid-staking token on Solana at about $2.9B, and it operates the dominant MEV infrastructure on the chain, with roughly 13.8% MEV share and a validator client that runs the majority of Solana stake. This is genuine, durable infrastructure.
The trough
The problem is the revenue cycle. Total MEV tips are running near $31M a year, down roughly 90% from a 2025 peak around $300-500M annualized. Of those tips, only about 3% currently reaches the DAO, roughly $1M a year. Against the circulating market cap that is an enormous multiple, which is why the token is expensive on realized cash flow.
The switch
The bull case is mechanical. A governance change already routes 100% of protocol fees to the DAO treasury, and an upcoming upgrade is designed to direct about 80% of fees into buying JTO. Governance also controls a slice of tips, JitoSOL rewards, and newer fee lines. The token becomes fair value only if that stack routes something like $10M or more a year to holders and MEV recovers. Two things, not one.
EXPECTED VALUE ~= 1.8x, CONDITIONAL ON THE FEE STACK TURNING ON AND MEV RECOVERING
JitoSOL is the largest liquid-staking token on Solana, about $2.9B, and a governance change already routes 100% of protocol fees to the DAO treasury.
The upgrade that directs about 80% of fees into JTO buys is not fully live yet. Until it is, the buy pressure is a plan, not a flow.
MEV tips are down about 90% from the 2025 peak. The value case needs that to turn, and that is outside the team's control.
The call
Grade BB. A dominant, durable franchise trading expensively on the cash that reaches the token today, and cheap only if the value-capture stack turns on and MEV recovers, which have to happen together. Watch two triggers: the fee-routing upgrade going live, and MEV tips turning up off the trough.
Confidence and what we could not verify
Moderate. TVL, fee and mechanism data are well sourced. The swing factors are the MEV cycle and the timing of the fee-routing upgrade, both uncertain.