Andreessen Horowitz’s crypto arm a16z Crypto announced a $50 million strategic investment in Jito, a leading liquid staking and MEV Maximal Extractable Value protocol on the Solana blockchain.
This marks a16z’s largest single commitment to Jito to date and underscores growing institutional interest in Solana’s high-throughput ecosystem amid a recovering crypto market.
The investment was made via a private token sale, granting a16z an undisclosed allocation of Jito’s native JTO tokens at a discounted rate. It values Jito at approximately $800 million post-investment, based on circulating supply metrics.
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Funds will support Jito’s expansion of open-source infrastructure, validator technology, developer tools, and liquid staking solutions. This includes enhancing the recently launched Block Assembly Marketplace (BAM), which optimizes transaction ordering and execution on Solana for better network efficiency.
Ali Yahya, General Partner at a16z Crypto: “Jito is catalyzing growth for the entire Solana ecosystem through its pace of delivery and BAM’s measurable impact on network efficiency. We’re excited to back Jito and its stellar team’s efforts to accelerate the adoption of decentralized finance.”
Brian Smith, Executive Director at the Jito Foundation: The deal has an “exceptionally long time horizon” and will help position Solana as “the home for internet capital markets well into the next decade.”
Jito is a core infrastructure provider on Solana, founded to improve validator performance and transaction processing. Its flagship products include: JitoSOL: A liquid staking token allowing users to stake SOL for rewards while maintaining liquidity over $3.2 billion in market cap as of the announcement.
MEV Tools: Including a specialized validator client and BAM, which reduces spam, enhances fairness, and boosts overall network speed. Jito powers about $2.8 billion in liquid staking activity on Solana, making it a pivotal player in the chain’s DeFi and staking economy.
a16z has been an early backer of Solana since 2017. This follows similar 2025 token-based deals like $55M in LayerZero and $70M in EigenLayer, signaling a strategy of long-term, locked commitments in blockchain infrastructure.
JTO token price surged ~8% intraday to $1.18 before settling around $1.14, reflecting optimism. Solana’s liquid staking TVL has grown amid rising demand for efficient staking solutions.
Jito has been active in U.S. discussions on liquid staking, including SEC guidance that could open doors for regulated products like staking yield exposure for traditional investors. The investment highlights Solana’s resilience post-FTX, with institutional inflows targeting protocols that enhance scalability and security.
Jito’s Block Assembly Marketplace (BAM)
Jito’s Block Assembly Marketplace (BAM) is a key component of the Jito protocol on the Solana blockchain, designed to optimize transaction processing, enhance network efficiency, and fairly distribute Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) opportunities.
BAM is an open-source infrastructure tool within Jito’s ecosystem that facilitates the creation and ordering of transaction blocks on Solana. It addresses inefficiencies in transaction processing by allowing validators, searchers, and other network participants to collaborate in a decentralized marketplace.
The goal is to improve Solana’s performance by reducing spam, prioritizing high-value transactions, and ensuring fairer MEV distribution.
Searchers entities like arbitrage bots or traders identify profitable MEV opportunities, such as arbitrage or liquidations, and bundle transactions into optimized sequences. These bundles are submitted to BAM, which acts as a marketplace where validators can select them for inclusion in the next block.
Validators running Jito’s specialized client software access BAM to choose transaction bundles based on predefined criteria (e.g., highest fees or network efficiency).
Unlike traditional blockchains where miners/validators unilaterally decide transaction order, BAM enables a competitive and transparent process.
MEV refers to the profit validators or searchers can extract by reordering, including, or excluding transactions in a block (e.g., through arbitrage or front-running).
BAM structures this process to minimize harmful MEV practices like front-running and shares profits more equitably among validators, searchers, and users via mechanisms like fee redistribution.
BAM reduces network spam by filtering low-value or redundant transactions, ensuring Solana’s high-throughput blockchain remains fast and cost-effective.
BAM is accessible to all Solana validators using Jito’s client, promoting transparency and community-driven development. By prioritizing high-value transactions, BAM mitigates network congestion caused by low-priority or malicious spam transactions.
Unlike traditional MEV extraction, where validators capture most profits, BAM redistributes a portion of MEV revenue to stakers and users via JitoSOL staking rewards.
Solana is known for its high transaction throughput up to 65,000 TPS. BAM ensures this capacity is used efficiently, preventing bottlenecks during high-demand periods.
By reducing spam and optimizing transaction ordering, BAM supports smoother operations for Solana-based DeFi applications, such as decentralized exchanges and lending platforms.
Since BAM’s launch, Solana has reported reduced transaction failures and lower latency during peak usage, with BAM handling a significant portion of Solana’s $2.8B liquid staking activity.
BAM’s infrastructure could pave the way for regulated staking products, as Jito engages with U.S. regulators on liquid staking frameworks.
BAM operates alongside Jito’s validator client, which over 30% of Solana validators use. It leverages Solana’s Proof-of-Stake consensus to ensure secure and efficient block production.
Developers can access BAM’s open-source code via Jito’s GitHub for custom integrations. This move positions Jito—and Solana—for deeper DeFi integration, potentially driving more adoption in high-speed blockchain applications.