Jito, Solana-Based Liquid Staking Protocol, Airdrops Governance Token

The freshly debuted token has a market cap of $242 million and enables token holders to vote on proposals on staking pool fees, treasury management and contributions for ongoing development. 

Jito, the second largest protocol on Solana by total value locked, debuted its new governance token Thursday, continuing the recent trend of airdrops on the layer 1 blockchain. 

The airdrop to Jito community members acts “as a recognition of their contribution in bootstrapping the network and to facilitate robust governance participation,” according to a blog post.  

JTO gives token holders voting power over Jito’s decentralized autonomous organization by allowing them to vote on proposals about staking pool fees, treasury management and contributions for ongoing development. 

The token is currently exchanging hands at $2.04, data from CoinGecko shows, and has a market cap of $242 million. Several centralized exchanges such as Coinbase, Bybit and MEXC have already listed JTO for trading. 

The token’s debut comes amid a revival in the Solana ecosystem. Solana’s total value locked – the amount of crypto assets deposited into the blockchain – has increased 115% in the past 30 days to around $700 million, per DefiLlama, vastly outpacing several other blockchain networks such as Ethereum, Avalanche, and Tron. Jito’s token was launched roughly two weeks after a different Solana-based airdrop, namely blockchain oracle firm Pyth. 

The airdropped tokens have an 18-month claiming window and make up 10% of the total JTO supply. Unclaimed tokens funnel into a treasury governed by Jito’s DAO, overseen by JTO holders. 

Jito, which launched in late 2022, is a liquid staking platform that aims to let users stake SOL tokens, which are locked up in validators to secure the Solana blockchain. It also, and provides liquidity to stakers by issuing JitoSOL, the protocol’s liquid staking token that represents the user’s initial deposit and accrued rewards.