Original | Odaily Planet Daily ( @OdailyChina )

Author | jk

To execute a professional trade on Solana, it typically requires opening eight tabs simultaneously.

Charts in Birdeye, placing orders in Jupiter, position management in Drift, yield strategies in another protocol, prediction markets in yet another, wallets need to be logged into eight times on different webpages, every tool serving its specific function, but none can connect them all. The bigger issue is that even when these are all pieced together, the execution quality still does not match that of centralized exchanges.

On-chain traders face a long-standing dilemma: either accept inferior tools or entrust assets to others.

The reason this issue has long remained unresolved is actually quite simple: those capable of solving it have always been busy doing other things.

Solana, JTO, and JTX

Four years ago, when Jito was still a startup with fewer than ten people, it chose a path that was least likely to be noticed: deeply integrating into Solana’s foundations, focusing on building the infrastructure that ordinary users will never directly interact with.

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

In simple terms, it is the "behind-the-scenes engine manufacturer" of the Solana blockchain. In the world of crypto, every on-chain transaction must go through a complex set of sorting, bidding, and confirmation mechanisms before being packaged into blocks, and Jito is a core component of this mechanism.

For example: imagine Solana as a highway, and Jito is the company responsible for designing and operating toll booths, ramp scheduling systems, and road surface sensors. Drivers (users and traders) typically do not perceive its existence, but without it, the overall efficiency of the road would significantly decrease.

Specifically, Jito currently has three core products. The Block Engine is responsible for processing the majority of on-chain transaction sorting and MEV distribution, effectively acting as the "dispatch center" before transactions enter blocks; JitoSOL is a token that allows holders to maintain liquidity while staking SOL, with a current market capitalization exceeding $800 million; BAM (Block Assembly Mechanism) is the next-generation block assembly architecture, with nearly half of Solana validators operating this client, and the network staking ratio exceeding 31%.

Jito's performance in Q1.

Today’s Jito is already 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 significant development: the launch of a trading product targeted at end users, JTX, which is expected to officially launch in July of this year.

So, what is JTX?

This is a self-custodial professional-level on-chain trading platform. Users do not need to transfer assets to any centralized entity; they can enjoy a trading experience close to centralized exchanges (CEX) while maintaining complete control over their assets. Chart analysis, various professional order types, spot trading, as well as upcoming perpetual contracts and prediction markets, are all integrated into a single interface. Its target users are those who already feel that a simple swap interface is not enough, but do not want to entrust their assets to centralized exchanges: advanced traders.

Why does a company that has been deeply involved behind the scenes want to come to the forefront? Why trading products? With these questions, the Odaily team spoke with Marc Liew, head of the Jito Foundation in the Asia-Pacific region, to discuss Jito’s next steps.

“We are not transforming, we are just making the most convenient thing”

When news about JTX surfaced, the initial reaction from the outside world was that Jito was going to "transform."

Marc Liew, the head of Jito Foundation APAC, disagrees with this characterization. “Rather than a transformation, it’s more like a natural extension,” he said. “Jito has spent four years building the foundational infrastructure that the Solana economy relies on, such as the Block Engine, JitoSOL, and BAM. This work has given us a deep understanding of what happens between a transaction's intention and settlement.”

However, he believes that this understanding has never been conveyed to end users.

“At a certain point, you start to ask: why hasn’t anyone communicated this to the users?” Marc said. “The teams developing trading products on Solana have not had this deep execution layer understanding. While teams like Jito possess this accumulation, they have never actually developed a trading product. JTX stands at this intersection. We are extending the infrastructure directly to the person it was meant to reach.”

Understanding this logic requires clarifying what Jito’s core competencies are. Its value lies not only in "building infrastructure" itself but also in accumulating extensive first-hand knowledge about on-chain trading mechanisms during the construction of this infrastructure: under what circumstances trades fail, how priority fees affect queue ordering, and how MEV is extracted during block production.

Jito’s Block Engine is the core node handling this on-chain mechanism, hence it has a depth of understanding of on-chain trading rules that other teams find difficult to replicate. This knowledge holds immense value for a product team aiming to build a high-quality trading experience.

“JTX is an attempt to productize this knowledge.” Marc told Odaily Planet Daily.

“Solana’s infrastructure is already good enough; the problem lies in the application layer”

When discussing JTX’s starting point, Marc’s assessment is quite straightforward: “Solana’s infrastructure is the best in the world. It handles daily transaction volumes exceeding the total of all other public chains combined and has undergone genuine high-pressure testing, which other chains have never faced at this degree. The bottleneck is not in the chain itself but in the applications built on top of it.”

The starting point for Jito in developing JTX is based on this assessment: Solana is already fast enough; it’s just that the applications built on it don’t match the capabilities of the chain itself.

The gap between the on-chain trading experience and off-chain trading experience is a problem that has been repeatedly discussed in the industry but has yet to be systematically resolved. For truly active traders, this gap is especially pronounced. “Professional traders on Solana currently have to piece together five or six, sometimes eight different applications to complete what should be a single workflow,” Marc described. “Drawing charts in one place, executing spot trades in another, asset portfolio management elsewhere, yield strategies in another protocol, with perpetual contracts and prediction markets potentially on another chain still. Even after piecing this all together, the execution quality is incomparable to that of centralized exchanges. As a result, they face a choice: either give up self-custody for a better experience or hold on to their assets with inferior tools.”

This dilemma is exactly what JTX aims to solve.

Terminal, aggregator, broker—none of these are the labels it seeks

JTX’s positioning is difficult to classify within the existing discourse of the industry.

Marc rejected several common labels one by one. “The term 'terminal' has already been occupied at a certain layer in the crypto industry; what we are doing is not at that layer. 'Aggregator' implies we are merely routing orders to others’ infrastructure. 'Broker' suggests there is an intermediary standing between you and your assets. None of these are accurate.”

His internal definition is: JTX is a trading engine. “It’s a professional workspace where serious traders execute trades, manage positions, and deploy capital. We aggregate all the best tools together and overlay a layer of infrastructure knowledge that is hard for any other chain to match.”

From a product perspective, JTX will provide spot trading (including RWA assets) at launch, with subsequent gradual integration of perpetual contracts (through collaboration with Phoenix) and prediction markets (through a Solana-native protocol currently being developed). Chart tools, order execution, asset portfolio management, and capital efficiency features will all be completed in the same account and interface.

The advantages of self-custody no longer need explaining: in traditional centralized exchanges, the assets users deposit are effectively under the platform's control. The collapse of FTX is the most extreme risk manifestation of this model. Users' assets exist on paper, but have long been misappropriated. JTX’s self-custody model means that assets always remain in the user’s own wallet; JTX is merely a transaction execution interface, and the platform itself has no authority to use users' funds.

Regarding tools like Jupiter, Birdeye, Axiom, Photon, Drift, Phoenix, which have been deeply involved in Solana for many years, Marc's attitude is that JTX should be understood as the interface that brings them together, rather than as a competitor. “It allows traders to access everything in the Solana ecosystem from one place, with institutional-level execution quality.”

The expression of “integration rather than competition” sounds stable. But judging from Jito’s deep binding with Solana ecosystem partners over the past few years, this might be its consistent operational logic: do well on the foundational level, let others run on top of it, 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 rooted in Jito's four years of practical accumulation. “Every team seriously working on Solana will eventually come to Jito to figure out how transactions actually work, how they drop on-chain, where they fail, and what determines success or failure,” Marc said, “We have spent four years studying every case in Solana's trading channel in depth. This knowledge is directly incorporated into JTX’s product design.”

Focusing on specific trading pain points:

• Front-running is one of the most troublesome issues in on-chain trading. Since all pending transactions are publicly visible before being packed into blocks, a bot capable of "cutting in line" can see your buy orders and preemptively buy at a higher priority fee. Once your transaction completes, the price has already increased, and then it sells to you. The next-generation BAM block assembly architecture allows transactions to remain private before execution, structurally severing this link.
• Failed transactions significantly increase during congestion on the Solana network, and failures also incur fees, often putting traders in the predicament of spending money without acquiring anything. JTX's design goal is “to either execute at the price you see or not execute at all,” fundamentally addressing this silent failure issue.
• Priority fee issues. During peak times, traders often need to pay higher priority fees to have their transactions prioritized. How much to set, when to set it, and what amount, lies behind a complex game logic that requires deep experience to manage. Jito’s understanding of how Solana handles transactions under pressure is directly translated into JTX’s execution quality management mechanism.

For CEX-level advanced order types, including limit orders, TWAP, stop loss and take profit, OCO, etc., Marc indicated that JTX will provide a portion of these at launch, with the remainder rolled out progressively. He provided a candid explanation of the technical challenges of implementing these functions on-chain: “The challenge of implementing these order types on-chain lies in the need for a level of execution reliability that most platforms cannot provide because those platforms are built on an infrastructure they do not deeply understand. Our team has constructed the execution infrastructure that Solana operates on. This means when we design a stop loss or OCO order, we are not hoping for the network to cooperate. We clearly understand how these orders interact with the trading pipeline and have designed the system architecture accordingly.”

Comparison with Hyperliquid: Respect, but different approaches

JTX can hardly escape comparisons with Hyperliquid. The latter has proven a massive market demand for professional on-chain trading experiences with its own L1, achieving more than $600 million in annual fees.

Marc gave sincere credit to Hyperliquid: “I have great respect for what they have built. They have proven that there is a huge demand for professional on-chain trading experiences — on their own L1, without Solana’s infrastructure advantages, they have managed to achieve annual fees over $600 million.”

He believes JTX’s differentiation lies in two dimensions: first, Jito's deep engineering accumulation and the overall support of the Solana ecosystem; second, there is a product positioning difference, JTX aims to become the application where traders can "access any category,” covering prediction markets, crypto assets, and the growing trend of RWA (real-world assets on-chain).

From this perspective, JTX achieves vertical integration of financial tools across the entire Solana ecosystem; compared to Hyperliquid’s “one chain, one tool” philosophy, JTX will undoubtedly be more comprehensive in functions, but whether its design and experience in the trading dimension can surpass Hyperliquid remains to be seen once the product is officially released.

“Many financial applications are evolving towards comprehensive platforms; in this dimension, JTX does indeed have competitors. But we believe that Jito's deep engineering expertise and the overall weight of the Solana ecosystem is our true differentiation.”

The most pressing concern for retail investors: what can JTO holders gain?

For readers unfamiliar with the terms, JTO is the governance token of the Jito ecosystem, and the rights of holders include not only participating in voting decisions but also receiving actual economic returns through protocol revenue distribution. A portion of the staking rewards generated by JitoSOL and the MEV income generated by the Block Engine will be allocated to JTO holders. This is the basic logic of Jito's token economics.

The launch of JTX introduces a direct revenue pipeline into this logic. Following the news of JTX, the price of JTO surged by 45%.

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

Marc likened this model to the existing mechanisms of JitoSOL and the Jito network: “This follows the same model already operating within the JitoSOL and the entire Jito network, where fees generated at the protocol level accumulate to JTO. JTX is integrated into the Jito economic framework, not functioning as an independently operated product. Every transaction that occurs on JTX directly contributes to the ecosystem.”

Marc also highlighted several indicators that he believes JTO holders should pay the closest attention to: the transaction volume on JTX is at the top of the revenue funnel; user retention determines the sustainability of income; and the expansion of asset types and market types indicates a widening revenue base. “Spot trading comes first; then perpetual contracts and prediction markets are on the roadmap. Each new market type is a new revenue dimension. JTO holders should regard JTX as they would JitoSOL or BAM, viewing it as another pillar at the market level that generates real economic activity and brings its value back to the token.”

In three years, the distinction between CEX and DEX may become irrelevant

When discussing the direction of on-chain trading over the next three years, Marc proposed a thought-provoking framework:

“The phrase ‘becoming more like CEX’ is actually the wrong perspective. What is truly happening is that the optimal elements of centralized trading, including speed, professional tools, and execution quality, are being rebuilt on a foundation that centralized exchanges can never reach, namely self-custody, transparency, and composability.”

In his view, three years from now, the distinction between "CEX" and "DEX" will become insignificant for most traders. “They just want the best execution, the best tools, and complete control over their assets. Products that allow this combination to feel effortless will win. We believe that the future's professional trading experience will thrive on-chain, live on Solana, and JTX is our bet on this vision.”

From a milestone perspective, Marc outlined several key happenings to track over the next 12 months: JTX will officially launch in July, supporting spot trading, professional order types, and self-custody; subsequently, it will expand to include perpetual contracts and prediction markets, at which point JTX is expected to become one of the most feature-complete on-chain trading venues. On the infrastructure side, the adoption of BAM continues to accelerate, and institutional layouts such as 21Shares JitoSOL ETP and partnerships with KODA in Korea are also progressing simultaneously.

Conclusion

From the launch of Solana Accelerate, to the official launch in July, and the expansion into perpetual contracts and prediction markets, JTX’s timeline is clear and aggressive. Whether it can find its own position within the competitive landscape formed by Jupiter, Drift, Phoenix, and Hyperliquid ultimately hinges on one thing: whether Jito's four years of accumulated infrastructure knowledge can truly translate into an execution quality difference that ordinary traders can perceive.

If the answer is affirmative, this will be one of the rare instances in the crypto industry of complete product vertical integration from the ground up. If not, it will still be a noteworthy attempt, documenting what a foundational infrastructure company experiences when stepping into the spotlight.

The answer will be revealed this July.

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