JitoSOL deposits hold near 10.4 million SOL in a quiet week

The quick take

Price: Jito ($JTO) trades at $0.449, down 2.5% in 24 hours and 3.1% in seven days (CoinGecko, 5:41 p.m. ET).
Trigger: The JitoSOL pool holds about 10.42 million $SOL, 0.6% less than a week ago and 0.5% more than a month ago (DefiLlama).
Watch: Whether the SOL count stays flat while the pool’s dollar value follows Solana’s price.

JitoSOL deposits barely moved this week. The Jito liquid staking pool held about 10.42 million SOL at 4:51 p.m. ET on Friday, Oct. 23, according to DefiLlama. That is 0.6% below the 10.49 million SOL it held at 8 p.m. ET on Oct. 16.

What happened

Jito runs a liquid staking pool on Solana ($SOL). Users deposit SOL and receive JitoSOL, a token that collects staking rewards and can still move through DeFi apps.

Over the past month, the pool has been flat in SOL terms. DefiLlama shows 10.37 million SOL on Sept. 24 and 10.42 million now, a gain of 0.5%. The weekly dip of about 65,000 SOL is small next to that total.

In dollars, the picture looks weaker. DefiLlama values the pool at $1.08 billion now, down from $1.19 billion on Sept. 24. That is a 9.4% drop, even though the pool holds more SOL than it did then.

Why it moved

The dollar value follows Solana’s price, not user deposits. DefiLlama’s own figures put each SOL in the pool at about $115 on Sept. 24 and about $104 now. $SOL trades at $103.77, up 0.2% in 24 hours and 0.4% in seven days (CoinGecko, 5:41 p.m. ET).

The same holds for the week. The pool’s dollar value slipped 1.1%, from $1.09 billion on Oct. 16 to $1.08 billion now, close to the 0.6% fall in its SOL count.

So the month’s loss in dollars came from a cheaper SOL, while holders mostly stayed put. The SOL count moved less than 1% in either direction over both the week and the month.

The cause of the small weekly outflow is not confirmed. Jito’s blog shows no new post since Sept. 28, so there is no announcement that explains it.

Who’s buying and selling

The governance token is a different story from the pool. $JTO trades at $0.449, with a 24-hour range of $0.447 to $0.466 (CoinGecko). It sits near the bottom of that range, and 92.5% below its record high of $6.01 from Dec. 7, 2023.

Sellers led in the token’s top pools. In the JTO/SOL pool on Orca, DexScreener counts 486 sells against 355 buys over 24 hours. GeckoTerminal shows the JTO/JitoSOL pool on Orca with 332 sells and 261 buys.

Those pools are small, with about $281,000 and $1.1 million in liquidity. A few trades can tilt them, so they show mood more than size.

What to watch next

JitoSOL trades at $135.35 on Jupiter, against $103.65 for SOL (5:44 p.m. ET). That means one JitoSOL is worth about 1.31 SOL. The ratio rises slowly as staking rewards build up inside the token.

For comparison, Jupiter‘s own liquid staking token, JupSOL, holds $542 million, per DefiLlama. That is about half the size of the JitoSOL pool. One JupSOL trades at about 1.22 SOL on Jupiter, but the two tokens started at different times, so their ratios are not a direct yield comparison.

The next signal is the SOL count. A steady count with a falling dollar value means holders are waiting. A falling count would mean people are leaving the pool, whatever SOL’s price does.

Bottom line: JitoSOL holders kept about 10.42 million SOL in the pool this week, so the drop in its dollar value reflects Solana’s price, not an exit.

Price data: CoinGecko (cross-checked with Jupiter).