Jito (JitoSOL) Review

JitoSOL is Jito's liquid staking token for Solana, and the only Solana entry in a category otherwise made up of Ethereum tokens. In the liquid staking ranking it now scores 8.6 out of 10 on five equally weighted criteria, up from 7.8. The re-check of Jito's documentation and repositories on 1 November 2026 found that the auditors the July review could not name are listed in Jito's own docs. The fee, the exit terms and the validator rules were already among the clearest in the category. The remaining gaps are small: some program code without a licence file, and StakeNet audit reports that do not name the firm.

How Jito scores in liquid staking

Each criterion is marked 0 to 10 and carries the same 20% weight. The basis is desk research of primary sources, not a test deposit.

The arithmetic: (9 + 9 + 8 + 9 + 8) / 5 = 43 / 5 = 8.6.

What changed: audit disclosure rose from 4 to 8. The July review read only the security overview, which says that three firms audited the program but does not name them. Jito's deployed programs page names all three and links each report. The other four marks are unchanged; the fee, exit, delegation and licence pages read the same as in July.

Strongest criteria: fee, exit and licence

Commission clarity (9). Jito states the rate, what it applies to and its rough cost in deposit terms. On 1 SOL of rewards left after validator commission, 0.04 SOL goes to the pool fee. The FAQ says the fee is applied after validator commissions, so holders can see both layers. The mark matches Stader and Frax Ether. It stops short of 10 because the destination of the 4% is not split out on the fee page.

Exit & redemption (9). Jito publishes both a fast route and a slow route and prices each. Unstaking the equivalent of 100 SOL directly costs about 0.1 SOL and takes up to an epoch. Jito attributes that wait to Solana's stake cooldown, not to its own design. The instant route depends on DEX liquidity, and the FAQ itself warns that large trades should check the spread. That dependence keeps the mark at 9, level with Ankr, rather than 10.

Licence & code openness (9). The code that holds and allocates the stake is under a recognised open-source licence: the SPL stake pool program, StakeNet and the validator client are all Apache-2.0. The one gap is jito-programs, the repository behind tip distribution. It has no licence file, and tip distribution is how MEV income reaches the pool. Stader, Origin, Puffer and Bedrock score 10 for an open-source licence file on their contract repositories, with no comparable gap found.

Weaker criteria: what is limited, and what is not stated

Operator decentralisation (8). Entry is rule-based, not curated by hand. Any validator meeting the published thresholds can be selected, and stake is spread evenly with a 1/400th target each. Excluding the superminority is a design choice that works against stake concentration. The limit is that the set is capped at 400 and requires Jito's own client. That is narrower than the open-entry pools of Stader and Puffer, which score 9.

Audit disclosure (8). Three firms are named, with reports and the exact code versions they reviewed. That is the category's definition of disclosure. Two caveats keep the mark below the 9s of Stader, Origin and Mantle. First, the named audits cover the generic SPL stake pool program, not Jito's own StakeNet or Interceptor programs. Second, StakeNet's own reports, dated 12 January 2024 and 29 July 2024, are listed in its repository without the auditor's name. That is a gap in what is stated; it does not mean the reports are weak.

What the score does not cover

• Reward rate. MEV income varies with market activity, and the rubric does not mark yield. On 1 November 2026 the pool account showed about 1.309 SOL per JitoSOL, a record of past accrual.
• Governance. JTO governance holds the pool manager role and can change fees and delegation settings. No criterion scores governance.
• DeFi use. Using JitoSOL in other protocols adds their risk. Drift's April 2026 incident update lists about 33,977 jitoSOL among the stolen funds.
• Chain. Solana's stake cooldown and validator economics differ from Ethereum's. The marks compare disclosure and design, not the two networks.

For how commission, cooldown and exit costs combine, see our guide to staking returns after costs; for the difference between staking and supplying DEX liquidity, see staking vs liquidity providing.

Jito vs Stader and Origin Ether

On the 1 November 2026 marks in the liquid staking ranking, Jito is listed second of ten, between Stader and Mantle mETH; Origin Ether is fifth.

Stader leads by 0.2: Jito's exit is two points better, but Stader gains one point each on operators, licence and audits. Jito leads Origin Ether by 1.0 on commission, exit and operators, while Origin is ahead on licence and audits. Peer entries are re-checked on their own schedules, so these gaps hold for the check date.

Who this rating suits

The score is most useful to a SOL holder who wants a priced choice between an instant and a slower exit, and stake spread across many validators by published rules. It is less suited to someone whose priority is audits of the protocol's own programs by named firms, where the record is thinner than the headline suggests. The rating describes published terms on one date; it is not a recommendation to stake and does not assess any individual's circumstances.