Jito staking deposits rise to 10.4 million SOL

The quick take

Price: Jito ($JTO) trades at $0.529, up 2.9% in 24 hours and down 2.7% in seven days (CoinGecko, 8:40 a.m. ET).
Trigger: Solana ($SOL) lost 8.1% this week, which cut the dollar value of JitoSOL deposits.
Watch: whether the SOL count in the pool keeps rising if the price slide goes on.

Jito staking deposits kept growing this week, even as their dollar value fell. Jito ($JTO) runs JitoSOL, a liquid staking token on Solana ($SOL). Users deposit SOL, receive JitoSOL and keep earning staking rewards while they hold it.

The pool held 10,448,194 SOL at 11:27 UTC on Oct. 10, according to DefiLlama. That is 28,777 SOL more than at the start of Oct. 3.

On Oct. 2 we reported that a higher SOL price had lifted the pool above $1.2 billion. This week the price turned the other way, and the deposits stayed put.

What happened

DefiLlama puts the pool’s value at $1.14 billion, down 7.5% from $1.24 billion at the start of Oct. 3. The value peaked at $1.27 billion on Oct. 5 before the slide began.

The biggest one-day drop came between Oct. 8 and Oct. 9. The value fell from $1.21 billion to $1.14 billion in that day. The SOL count barely moved: 10,438,957 SOL before and 10,438,611 SOL after.

CoinGecko gives a matching reading from a second angle. It lists JitoSOL with a market value of $1.15 billion at 12:44 UTC, on about 8.0 million tokens in circulation.

Why it moved

The price did the work, not the stakers. CoinGecko shows $SOL at $109.69 at 12:40 UTC, down 8.1% in seven days. The pool’s dollar value fell by almost the same share.

Each JitoSOL token is worth more than one SOL, because staking rewards build up inside it. CoinGecko prices JitoSOL at $143.15 against $109.76 for SOL, or about 1.30 SOL per token. Multiply that by 8.0 million tokens and you get roughly 10.4 million SOL, in line with DefiLlama’s count.

So holders did not pull out as the price fell. The SOL count rose 0.3% over the week, a small but steady gain.

Another liquid staking pool shows the same pattern. Jupiter‘s staked SOL pool grew from 5,166,424 SOL to 5,181,423 SOL over the same stretch, also up 0.3%, while its dollar value fell 7.3% to $569 million, per DefiLlama.

Jito’s smaller restaking product followed the price too. DefiLlama shows Jito Restaking at $18.7 million, down 7.2% in seven days.

Who’s buying and selling

$JTO held up better than $SOL this week. It trades at $0.529, down 2.7% in seven days and up 2.9% in the past 24 hours, per CoinGecko. Jupiter’s price for the token matched within 0.03%.

Buyers led in the token’s biggest pool, the JTO/JitoSOL pair on Orca, which holds $1.29 million in liquidity. DexScreener counts 895 buys against 670 sells over 24 hours. GeckoTerminal shows 894 buys and 672 sells.

Those counts cover one pool only. They show more trades on the buy side, not how much money each side moved.

What to watch next

The next test is the SOL count, not the dollar figure. If deposits keep rising while $SOL slides, stakers are holding through the drop. A falling count would be the first sign of holders leaving.

The two readings are also worth tracking side by side. DefiLlama’s SOL count and CoinGecko’s token supply agree today, so the 10.4 million SOL figure is on firm ground. A gap between them would call for a closer look before any conclusion.

The dollar value will keep moving with $SOL in both directions. That makes the SOL count the cleaner gauge of demand for Jito staking.

Bottom line: Jito’s pool lost dollar value this week only because $SOL fell; the amount of SOL staked through it still grew.

Price data: CoinGecko.