从幕后到台前，Jito的JTX能否重新定义链上交易？

Original by Odaily (@OdailyChina)

Author: jk

Making a professional trade on Solana usually requires opening eight tabs simultaneously.

Charts on Birdeye, order execution on Jupiter, position management on Drift, yield strategies on another protocol, prediction markets somewhere else, logging into wallets across different websites eight times. Each tool excels at its own job, but none connects them together. The bigger issue is that even after piecing all of this together, the execution quality still can't match that of centralized exchanges.

On-chain traders have long faced a dilemma: either accept inferior tools, or entrust assets to others.

The reason this problem has persisted for so long is simple: those capable of solving it have been busy doing other things.

Solana, JTO, and JTX

Four years ago, when Jito was a startup with fewer than ten people, it chose one of the least visible paths: delving deep into Solana's底层 (underlying infrastructure), focusing on building foundational components that ordinary users would never directly interact with.

For those unfamiliar with Solana, you might ask: What is Jito?

Simply put, it's the "behind-the-scenes engine manufacturer" for the Solana blockchain. In the crypto world, every on-chain transaction undergoes a complex sequence of ordering, bidding, and confirmation before being packaged into a block. Jito provides the core components of this mechanism.

Think of it this way: Imagine Solana as a highway. Jito is the company responsible for designing and operating the toll booths, ramp management systems, and road surface sensors. Drivers (users and traders) might not notice its presence, but without it, the entire road's traffic efficiency would be severely compromised.

Specifically, Jito currently has three core products. The Block Engine handles the majority of transaction ordering and MEV distribution on-chain, acting as the "scheduling center" before transactions enter a block; JitoSOL is a token that allows holders to stake SOL while maintaining asset liquidity, currently boasting a market cap exceeding $800 million; and BAM (Block Assembly Mechanism) is the next-generation block assembly architecture, with nearly half of Solana validators currently running this client, representing over 31% of network stake.

Jito Q1 performance.

Today, Jito is one of the most important and foundational infrastructure providers in the entire Solana ecosystem.

In May 2026, at the Solana Accelerate conference in Miami, Jito announced a major development: the launch of its end-user trading product, JTX, expected to officially go live in July this year.

So, what is JTX?

It is a self-custodied, professional-grade on-chain trading platform. Users don't need to transfer their assets to any centralized institution. While maintaining full control over their assets, they can enjoy a trading experience close to that of centralized exchanges (CEXs). Chart analysis, various professional order types, spot trading, and future plans for perpetual contracts and prediction markets are all integrated within a single interface. Its target users are advanced traders who find simple swap interfaces insufficient but are unwilling to entrust their assets to centralized exchanges.

Why would a company deeply entrenched in the background step into the spotlight? Why start with a trading product? With these questions, the Odaily team spoke with Marc Liew, head of Jito Foundation's Asia-Pacific region, to discuss Jito's next steps.

"We Didn't Pivot; We Just Built the Most Handy Tool"

Upon hearing the news about JTX, the initial reaction from outsiders was that Jito was "pivoting."

Marc Liew, APAC Head of Jito Foundation, disagrees with this characterization. "It's more of a natural extension than a pivot," he said. "Jito spent four years perfecting the underlying infrastructure that the Solana economy depends on—the Block Engine, JitoSOL, BAM. This work has given us an extremely deep understanding of what happens between a transaction's intent and its settlement."

However, he believes that this understanding has never been passed on to the end user.

"At some point, you start asking: why hasn't anyone told users about this?" Marc said. "Teams building trading products on Solana don't have this depth of execution-level knowledge. And teams like Jito, who possess this accumulated knowledge, have never really built a trading product. JTX sits at this intersection. We are extending our infrastructure directly to the person it was always meant to serve."

To understand this logic, you first need to grasp Jito's core competitive advantage. Its value lies not just in "building infrastructure" itself, but in the immense first-hand knowledge accumulated during the process about on-chain transaction mechanisms: when transactions fail, how priority fees affect ordering, and how MEV is extracted during block production.

Jito's Block Engine is the core node handling this on-chain mechanism, giving it a depth of understanding of on-chain trading rules that other teams find hard to replicate. This knowledge is incredibly valuable for a product team aiming to build a high-quality trading experience.

"JTX is an attempt to productize this knowledge." Marc told Odaily.

"Solana's Infrastructure is Good Enough; the Problem Lies in the Application Layer"

Discussing JTX's origin, Marc's assessment was direct: "Solana's infrastructure is the best in the world. It handles more daily transaction volume than all other public chains combined and has passed real-world high-stress tests that no other chain has faced. The bottleneck for adoption isn't the chain itself; it's the stuff built on top of it."

Jito's motivation for building JTX is based on this judgment: Solana is already fast enough, but the application layer built on top of it doesn't yet match the chain's own capabilities.

The gap between on-chain and off-chain trading experiences is a problem frequently discussed within the industry but one that hasn't been systematically resolved. For truly active traders, this gap is particularly stark. "Professional traders on Solana currently have to piece together five, six, sometimes eight different applications just to complete what should be a single workflow," Marc described. "Charting in one place, executing spot trades in another, portfolio management somewhere else, yield strategies on another protocol, and perpetuals and prediction markets possibly on different chains. Even after stitching it all together, the execution quality can't compare to a CEX. So they face a choice: either give up self-custody for a better experience, or keep their assets and accept inferior tools."

This dilemma is precisely what JTX aims to solve.

It Doesn't Want the Labels of Terminal, Aggregator, or Broker

JTX's positioning is hard to categorize neatly within the existing industry terminology.

Marc rejected several common labels one by one. "'Terminal' is a term already occupied by a certain type of product in the crypto industry; what we're building isn't at that level. 'Aggregator' implies we're just routing orders to someone else's infrastructure. 'Broker' suggests a middleman standing between you and your assets. None of these are accurate."

His internal definition is that JTX is a trading engine. "This is a professional workspace where serious traders execute trades, manage positions, and deploy capital. We bring together all the best tools and overlay them with a layer of infrastructure knowledge that's hard for other chains to match."

On the product side, JTX will initially offer spot trading (including RWA assets) upon launch, followed by the gradual integration of perpetuals (via a partnership with Phoenix) and prediction markets (through a Solana-native protocol under development). Charting tools, order execution, portfolio management, and capital efficiency functions are all handled within a single account and interface.

The advantage of self-custody needs no further explanation: on traditional centralized exchanges, assets deposited by users are effectively controlled by the platform. The collapse of FTX is the most extreme example of this risk. Users' assets exist on the books but have been misappropriated. JTX's self-custody model means assets always remain in the user's own wallet; JTX is just an interface for executing trades, and the platform itself has no authority over user funds.

Regarding tools on Solana that have been deeply cultivated over years, like Jupiter, Birdeye, Axiom, Photon, Drift, and Phoenix, Marc's stance is that JTX should be seen as the interface that brings them together, not as their competitor. "It allows traders to get the best of the Solana ecosystem in one place, with institutional-grade execution quality."

The phrase "integration, not competition" sounds safe. However, judging by Jito's historical pattern of deeply integrating with Solana ecosystem partners, this might precisely be its consistent modus operandi: build the foundation, let others operate on top, and when the time is right, take over the interface layer as well.

Execution Quality is Jito's True Moat

In all narratives about JTX, "execution quality" is the most frequently mentioned term.

This is backed by four years of Jito's real-world experience. "Every serious team building on Solana will, at some point, come to Jito to understand how transactions actually work—how they land on-chain, where they fail, what determines success or failure," Marc said. "We've spent four years understanding every scenario in Solana's transaction pipeline. This knowledge is directly embedded into JTX's product design."

This translates into addressing specific trading pain points:

• Front-running is one of the most frustrating problems in on-chain trading. Since all pending transactions are publicly visible before being packed into a block, bots capable of "jumping the queue" can see your buy order, buy at a higher priority fee before you, and then sell to you once your order goes through at a higher price. BAM's next-generation block assembly architecture allows transactions to remain private until execution, structurally breaking this chain.
• Failed transactions increase significantly during Solana network congestion. Failures still incur fees, leaving traders in a "money spent, nothing bought" predicament. JTX's design goal is to either execute a trade at the price you see or not execute at all, fundamentally solving this silent failure issue.
• The issue of priority fees. During high-traffic periods on Solana, traders often need to pay higher priority fees for their transactions to be processed first. Determining how much, when, and how much to set involves a game theory logic requiring deep experience. Jito's understanding of how Solana handles transactions under pressure is directly translated into JTX's execution quality management mechanisms.

Regarding CEX-level advanced order types, including limit orders, TWAP, stop-loss/take-profit, OCO, etc., Marc stated that JTX will offer some of these at launch, with the rest rolling out over time. He gave a frank explanation of the technical challenges in implementing these on-chain: "The challenge of implementing these order types on-chain lies in needing a level of execution reliability that most platforms cannot provide, because those platforms are built on infrastructure they don't deeply understand. Our team built the execution infrastructure that Solana runs on. This means when we design a stop-loss/take-profit order or an OCO, we're not just hoping the network cooperates. We know exactly how these orders interact with the transaction pipeline and have designed the system architecture accordingly."

Comparison with Hyperliquid: Respect, but a Different Approach

JTX can hardly escape comparisons with Hyperliquid. The latter, with its own L1, has achieved annualized fees exceeding $600 million, proving a massive market demand for professional on-chain trading experiences.

Marc offered genuine praise for Hyperliquid: "I have deep respect for what they've built. They proved there's enormous demand for professional on-chain trading experiences—on their own L1, without any of Solana's infrastructure advantages, they achieved over $600 million in annualized fees."

He believes JTX differentiates itself in two dimensions: firstly, Jito's deep engineering expertise and the overall support of the Solana ecosystem; secondly, a different product positioning. JTX aims to be the application where traders "can access any asset class," covering prediction markets, crypto assets, and the growing trend of RWA (Real World Assets) tokenization.

From this perspective, JTX represents a vertical integration of financial instruments across the entire Solana ecosystem. Compared to Hyperliquid's "one-chain-as-a-tool" philosophy, JTX will likely be more comprehensive in functionality. However, whether its trading design and experience can surpass Hyperliquid remains to be seen after the official product launch.

"Many financial applications are evolving towards full-asset-class platforms, and in that dimension, JTX does have competitors. But we believe Jito's deep engineering expertise and the overall weight of the Solana ecosystem are our true differentiators."

The Question Retail Cares About Most: What Do JTO Holders Get?

For unfamiliar readers, JTO is the governance token of the Jito ecosystem. Holders' rights aren't limited to voting on proposals; they also gain economic returns through protocol revenue distribution. A portion of the staking rewards from JitoSOL and the MEV revenue from the Block Engine flows back to JTO holders. This is the basic logic of Jito's tokenomics.

The launch of JTX adds a new direct consumer revenue pipeline to this logic. Following the news about JTX, JTO surged 45%.

The revenue distribution structure is quite clear: 80% of JTX's protocol revenue flows to the Jito Protocol, ultimately accruing to JTO holders; the remaining 20% is reinvested into the product's continued growth and development.

Marc likened this model to the existing mechanisms of JitoSOL and the Jito network: "This continues the same model already running in JitoSOL and the entire Jito network—fees generated at the protocol level accrue to JTO. JTX plugs into the Jito economic architecture, not as an independent product. Every transaction occurring on JTX directly contributes to the ecosystem."

Marc also outlined the key metrics for JTO holders to watch: JTX's trading volume is the top of the revenue funnel; user retention determines revenue sustainability; expansion in asset types and market types signifies a broadening revenue base. "Spot trading launches first, with perpetuals and prediction markets on the roadmap. Each new market type represents a new revenue front. JTO holders should view JTX like JitoSOL or BAM—as another pillar in the market layer, generating real economic activity and returning its value back to the token."

Three Years From Now, the Distinction Between CEX and DEX Might Not Matter

Discussing the future of on-chain trading over the next three years, Marc proposed a thought-provoking framework:

"The phrase 'increasingly like a CEX' is actually the wrong perspective. What's really happening is that the best elements of centralized trading—speed, professional tools, execution quality—are being rebuilt on a foundation that centralized exchanges can never match: self-custody, transparency, and composability."

In his view, three years from now, the distinction between "CEX" and "DEX" will cease to matter for most traders. "They just want the best execution, the best tools, and full control over their assets. The product that makes this combination feel effortless will win. We believe the future of professional trading lives on-chain, on Solana, and JTX is our bet on this vision."

In terms of milestones, Marc outlined the most trackable events for the next 12 months: JTX's official launch in July, supporting spot trading, professional order types, and self-custody; followed by expansion into perpetuals and prediction markets, potentially making JTX one of the most feature-complete on-chain trading venues. On the infrastructure side, BAM adoption continues to accelerate, alongside institutional initiatives like the 21Shares JitoSOL ETP and the partnership with Korea's KODA.

Conclusion

From its announcement at Solana Accelerate to its July launch and subsequent expansion into perpetuals and prediction markets, JTX's timeline is clear and aggressive. Whether it can carve out its place in a competitive landscape featuring Jupiter, Drift, Phoenix, and Hyperliquid ultimately depends on one thing: whether Jito's four years of accumulated infrastructure knowledge can translate into a tangible execution quality difference that ordinary traders can perceive.

If the answer is yes, this will be a rare instance of complete vertical integration from the underlying layer to the frontend in the crypto industry. If not, it will still be a noteworthy experiment, documenting what happens when an infrastructure company steps into the spotlight.

The answer will be revealed this July.