Jito Enters Solana Restaking Market, Reaches All-Time High in TVL

Jito, the largest DeFi protocol on Solana by total value locked (TVL), entered the restaking market with a bang on Wednesday.

DeFi protocol Jito (JTO) has become the latest project to offer restaking services, opening up a new avenue for users to generate passive income from their crypto holdings.

On Wednesday, Jito announced the launch of restaking deposits for the first time, quickly reaching its self-imposed limit of 147,000 SOL, valued at approximately $25 million, as per the Jito website.

Restaking protocols often begin with a limited capacity for user deposits to ensure smooth operations, gauge interest and generate buzz.

According to DefiLlama, Jito's restaking rollout has contributed to the protocol achieving an all-time high in total value locked (TVL) in both USD and SOL.

At press time, crypto users have deposited around 14.1 million SOL, or $2.4 billion, into Jito, which constitutes nearly 39% of Solana's collective $6.3 billion in TVL.

"Jito marks the second entrance in the Solana restaking market and has already gained 8.3% of the market share," 21shares research analyst Tom Wan noted in an X post early Thursday.

Solayer leads the market by a significant margin with a TVL of $274.6 million, out of the seven protocols offering Solana restaking, according to a Dune Analytics dashboard.

In his post, Wan argued that the restaking market on Solana could eventually grow to reach a size of $3 billion to $10 billion.

Restaking involves extending the security provided by staked assets to additional applications and blockchain networks.

In practical terms, users can stake their liquid staking tokens to earn additional rewards from securing more than just the native blockchain, while networks can set economic parameters to achieve consensus.

The advent of EigenLayer, which brought restaking to Ethereum in 2023, and the more recent arrival of Babylon for Bitcoin in 2024 have helped the restaking ecosystem balloon to a TVL of $16 billion, making it the fifth largest DeFi category, behind decentralized exchanges, bridges, lending and liquid staking.

After Jito reached the deposit limit for its vault program, the Jito Foundation advised those still looking to restake to "stay tuned for PHASE 2 of the launch during which the global deposit caps will be raised."

According to a September governance post by Jito Foundation contributor Andrew Thurman, the second phase, also known as the staking phase, "is expected to launch a number of weeks following the deposits phase, depending on development and audit timelines."

Meanwhile, JTO, Jito's governance token, has seen minimal price movement over both the past 24 hours and seven days, trading at $2.35 and giving it a market cap of $302 million, according to data from CoinGecko.