Community call for Jito DAO Delegates
The Jito Foundation is issuing a public call for delegates!
Individuals, institutions, and entities invested in guiding the future of the Jito Network should follow the questionnaire guidelines below. Meanwhile, current JTO tokenholders are encouraged to consider allocating their voting power to prospective delegates.
In addition to the open call for further community engagement, the Jito Foundation will be delegating 5 million JTO voting power sourced from the Jito Foundation’s funds among a number of applicants in order to kickstart the governance process. The Jito Foundation will announce its delegate selections in the coming weeks with an accompanying Temperature Check.
Context
On January 1st, 2023, the total value locked (TVL) of the entirety of the Solana ecosystem stood at just $210 million – a staggering 98% drawdown from the chain’s peak of over $10 billion.
Just 11 months later, on Dec. 7th, 2023, nearly 10,000 early supporters of the Jito Network were the recipients of an airdrop currently valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars – a single token release nearly matching the total value secured by the network not even a calendar year prior.
As the Jito Network emerged as a leading force in Decentralized Finance, Solana found its footing amid the bear. The rise of the Jito Network is directly tied to the resurgence of the broader Solana ecosystem, and part of the reason why Solana reestablished itself as top blockchain according to multiple metrics is in part due to community adoption of Jito products.
As of today, over 50% of Solana validators utilize the Jito-Solana client, an open-source software that reduces unproductive spam on the chain while democratizing access to MEV revenues. Meanwhile, JitoSOL – the Jito Network’s flagship LST boasting MEV-bolstered yields – grew a remarkable 172x over the course of 2023.
During the same period, Solana’s TVL increased sevenfold as a resurgence of existing protocols and an abundance of new entrants continued to innovate, reinvigorating what some observers had cast as a derelict ecosystem. Aside from the ‘DeFi Summer’ phenomenon of 2020, there are few comparisons for this type of growth at scale.
The Jito Network’s StakeNet will enable users to transparently and trustlessly monitor and manage validator sets, ultimately adding an unprecedented additional layer of decentralization to JitoSOL’s market-leading LST system. Additionally, StakeNet is a generalizable protocol with multiple additional possible use cases such as restaking.
Meanwhile, the broader Solana community is eagerly awaiting the launch of multiple governance systems for leading protocols which should bring additional users and engagement to the chain.
Jito Network’s open-sourced, decentralized protocols are deeply integrated into the Solana tech stack across a number of vectors, and as the pace of the new bull market builds to a gallop the Jito Foundation hopes to utilize governance to continue to grow the ecosystem.
Goals
Among the rapidly-growing Solana DeFi community, a rallying cry has organically emerged: grow the pie.
The JTO airdrop was the culmination of a remarkable surge in activity across both the Jito Network and the Solana blockchain. In much the same way the JTO airdrop helped bolster Solana TVL, the activation of JTO governance aims to invigorate Solana public goods culture, growing the pie from a community perspective.
While there are a number of notable exceptions, governance on Solana has historically been brittle and perfunctory when compared with the systems of its peers. The Jito delegate program is a step towards fostering the type of inclusive, intellectually rigorous, and engaged governance seen on other chains.
In addition to soliciting delegates through this public application process, the Jito Foundation is in active discussions with other protocols to participate in their governance processes once live. Together, we are working to build the most vibrant DAO ecosystem across the entire crypto landscape.
Mechanics and Timelines
As of today, delegation proposals are now open. Persons who are interested in soliciting additional voting power should post a response to the questionnaire below on the forum post here.
While prospective community members will be welcome to post delegation proposals here in perpetuity, those who wish to be considered for a portion of the Jito Foundation’s 5 million JTO token delegation should post an application no later than Friday, February 2nd.
The Jito Foundation will be selecting a number of delegates from the pool of public applicants to delegate 5m JTO token voting power. The recipients and the sum will be revisited quarterly in order to ensure delegates are actively engaged, and potentially reduce the Jito Foundation stake as community delegation activity increases.
Throughout the next week, the Jito Foundation will host at least two Twitter spaces in order to allow prospective delegates an additional opportunity to state their case to the community. Prospective delegates are also encouraged to campaign on social media, including the Jito Discord and elsewhere.
Users struggling with the delegation process or those who have inquiries regarding the questionnaire should contact andrew@jito.network.
Why Delegation?
Governance attacks are an increasingly common pitfall for maturing projects. In this context, Jito’s governance standards are relatively high: achieving quorum requires 3m JTO token voting power. Yet as of today, the Realms DAO has 176 members with under 100k JTO deposited into Realms. With important StakeNet-related votes on the horizon, it’s imperative for the Jito Foundation to foster the governance process.
Per the initial JTO token distribution, the Jito Realms DAO currently controls 240 million JTO tokens. Separately, the Jito Foundation has an additional token allocation which it will be using in part to empower a selection of prospective delegates. The Jito Foundation is currently planning to delegate the equivalent of 5m tokens, but as community involvement accelerates, the amount the Jito Foundation delegates will likely be reduced.
The questionnaire below demonstrates some of the thinking that will guide the Jito Foundation’s delegate selection: alignment with both Solana and the Jito Network; expertise and domain knowledge; views on key issues such as decentralization tradeoffs and liquidity mining. A diversity of entities and perspectives is ideal.
The Jito Foundation looks forward to working towards empowering a wide array of community members to guide key decisions for the protocol.
Questionnaire
The goal of the questionnaire is to be high-signal. Please answer with as much detail as you feel is necessary to inform the community of your views.
Identity and background
- What is the delegate’s identity and background?
- Has the delegate historically contributed to the Jito Network?
- Has the delegate historically been involved in protocol governance?
- Is the delegate committed to helping the Jito Network and Solana succeed? Explain.
Candidate views
- How should JitoSOL validator delegation balance performance (yield) versus decentralization goals?
- What should be the priorities for JTO liquidity mining and DAO token grants?
- What are your goals for the DAO as a delegate?