The Solana staking pool Jito has reported monthly revenues exceeding $100 million in priority fees and tips for November and December, as per a recent update from Kairos Research. In 2024, tips revenue for Jito’s validators increased by an average of 32% monthly, reaching a peak of approximately $210 million in November.
This surge demonstrates the growing popularity of the Solana network and highlights the increasing earnings of validators from Maximum Extractable Value (MEV), a process where certain transactions are prioritized over others. Users tip validators to ensure their transactions are executed as intended during block building, leading to higher transaction costs.
Remarkably, in 2024, Solana’s validators reportedly earned more from MEV than Ethereum’s, coinciding with transaction fees on Solana rising from 60,000 SOL daily in January to over 150,000 in October, according to Dune Analytics data. As of December 26, more than 93% of Solana validators use Jito’s software for optimizing block-building earnings, reports Jito Labs.
Additionally, Jito issues a liquid restaking token (LRT) known as JitoSOL, becoming Solana’s leading decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol, with a total value locked (TVL) reaching nearly $2.75 billion, according to DefiLlama. Restaking allows tokens already staked with a validator to be used to secure other protocols, offering tradable claims on restaked asset pools. Furthermore, holders of Jito’s governance token, JTO, approved a move to allocate a portion of tip revenues to JitoSOL restakers, with Jito planning to redirect 0.15% of tip revenue to them, while validators retain most of the income from tips. As of late December, JitoSOL restakers are reported to yield around 8.6%, although Ethereum still leads in staking and restaking TVL, with EigenLayer holding nearly $15 billion.
