JTO Utility And Tokenomics

JIP - Ideas
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Jito DAO: Roundtable One

Below is an overview of the first Jito Roundtable held at 10am ET Tuesday 29th 2025. If you didn’t catch it you can check it out on the X feed HERE. Continuing the theme of this thread, it was an incredibly high signal chat, with @cosmojiang @BlockworksResearch @David_Grid @Ian and Nate (Token Engineering Commons). The full transcript can be found HERE.

We will continue, with two further roundtables. DM me or @andrewt if you would like to participate.

1. Why the roundtable was held

  • Jito DAO captures material REV – since its launch the Jito DAO has become one of the highest fee-earning DAOs in DeFi.

  • No agreed capital-allocation policy – the DAO still lacks a strategy on whether the cash flows should be returned to token-holders or re-invested to widen Jito’s moat.

  • Goal of the Rountables – surface the leading forum ideas, debate them live, and start converging on a proposal that can be coded, tooled-up and put to a DAO vote in the next few weeks.

2. Proposals & arguments at a glance

Theme Proponent(s) Core Mechanics Claimed Upside Main Concerns / Counter-points
Epoch-end SOL-for-JTO auctions (buy-back via English auction) Ian (Kairos) Every epoch 2 % of SOL tips are auctioned; bids must be in JTO → drives continuous market buy-pressure. “Moment-in-time value capture”; reflexive flywheel (higher JTO → cheaper incentive spend). Added complexity, depends on healthy JTO float & off-chain liquidity; might leak value to arbitrageurs.
Dynamic (valuation-aware) buybacks / dividends David (Finality), Cosmo (Pantera) Sliding scale keyed to revenue or m-cap multiples: cheap → buy back; fair → hold; rich → fee switch. Mimics public-equity capital-allocation best-practice; avoids buying an over-priced token; simple to explain. Needs robust oracles; still leaves the growth budget question open.
Barter / DAO-to-DAO “strategic buyback” Orig. Nick/Andrew; discussed by Blockworks Buy back JTO and immediately lodge it with a partner DAO in exchange for preferential treatment (e.g. liquidity routing). Hard-wires long-term alignment between protocols. “Just do the deal” – the buyback layer is unnecessary overhead.
Growth is a priority Darren (Blockworks), Nate (TEC), Dan (Blockworks Data) Funnel a majority of cash flow into new products:

  • Jito-backed yield-bearing stablecoin

  • Wrapped BTC on Solana

  • Decentralised RPC network

  • Possible MEV-client M&A|LST market still early; MEV margins may compress; winning new verticals widens moat more than redistributions do.|Must prove high ROI; DAOs historically poor at grant-style capital deployment; danger of analysis-paralysis.|
    |Keep mechanism simple, governance disciplined|Cosmo, several others|Start with a light-weight, auditable rule set; revisit every few months.|Execution risk drops; reinforces a “capital-efficiency culture”.|May leave marginal efficiency on the table compared with bespoke mechanisms.|

3. Areas of emerging consensus

  1. Growth and distribution are not mutually exclusive – treat them as separate levers; fund high-ROI growth proposals case-by-case, but establish an always-on and dynamic return-of-capital framework.

  2. Simplicity > complexity – simple mechanisms, complexity (and people managed structures) add failure and centralisation risk.

  3. Tooling gap – the DAO can already pass proposals for growth, but it lacks on-chain primitives for auctions, dynamic buybacks or fee streaming. Building those contracts/oracles is the actionable next step.

  4. Milestone-based funding for any growth spend (including potential DAO-to-DAO deals or M&A) is preferred over open-ended grant programs.

4. Key open questions to solve before a formal JIP

  • To what degree do we need to land strategy now: revenue multiple? price-to-SOL ratio? Market-cap-to-cash-flow? Or, concentrate on moving first?

  • Growth to Re-distribution balance: no hard numbers were agreed; participants leaned toward a flexible rule linked to opportunity and context.

  • Which mechanisms: auctions, fee-switches, buy-backs (smart, but how?), others? More than one? Which ones?

  • Governance workflow: structurally how do we get the tools built, does every parameter change require a full DAO vote? Levels of autonomy? What kind of mandate can we build?

5. Immediate next steps

  1. Proposal drafting – Andrew, Nick (and volunteers) will begin forging a proposal framework and start thinking about how we can get the DAO to truly build its own tokenomics function.

  2. Forum dialogue – Let’s keep the conversation going here, it’s high quality and shaping the roundtables and the proposal. Consider it an important backchannel to the roundtables.

  3. Round-table #2 – cover more mechanisms, get more expert insight, and continue the thinking. Any feedback on #1 most appreciated.

  4. JIP submission – target this month to keep momentum and capitalise on current chain activity and sentiment.

6. Take-away in one line

The DAO agrees Jito’s cash flows are an extremely high value strategic asset that need to be activated; the challenge is to forge a DAO strategy for getting the mechanisms in place that utilise valuation-aware triggers, whilst maintaining maximal decentralisation – tooling work starts immediately post vote, roundtable two, next week.

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