JIP-39: Maximising JitoSOL Performance - The next phase of JitoSOL economics

JIP - Official
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I’d be interested to know whether other considerations and alternative implementations were considered, as these are not discussed in the proposal:

  1. The proposal suggests that the Jito Reference Validator is necessary to achieve the improved yield, ostensibly through the distribution of block rewards to stakers. It doesn’t discuss whether the alternative - a system for third party validators who receive stake to share block rewards to the jitoSOL pool - was considered, such a system has been implemented by other pools, e.g. Marinade.
  2. It is not described how block rewards will be distributed to the pool. Has the status of SIMD-123 been evaluated and whether implementation is in the near future? If it is, evaluation of utilising the native mechanism for other validators to share block rewards to the pool?
  3. It is not clearly defined who operates the reference validator (Labs or Foundation, the definition of Reference Validator only says Jito)
  4. The yield gain maths assumes that block rewards measure 60bps of total stake, while this is true for the past 30 days as of writing this comment, for the past 90 days it is 50 bps, and at times has been substanially less. An explanation how this number was chosen and over what time period it is expected to be a sustainable approximation of future block rewards would be welcome.
  5. The proposal does not discuss the benefit that Jito (whichever entity runs the validator) may receive from the additional stake weight it controls in the network, including possible benefits from order flow & arbitrage opportunities, whether benefits economically, influentially or in product distribution and adoption.

I wear two hats here: Independent ecosystem member and representative of SOL Strategies, but also as a DAO delegate. As the former, I view this from a lens of network health and generate goodness. As the latter I view it more strictly from the perspective of the DAO and what is the best outcome for jitoSOL and JTO holders. It is always easier to say no now and upgrade to a yes later than the inverse and at this stage I feel this proposal does not meet the threshold that it is clearly in the best interest of the DAO.

Edit to add: Another question: how was 18bps chosen as the target yield enhancement?