Jito’s Successful Entry Into SOL Restaking Helps Push TVL to Record High

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

The protocol known for its JitoSOL liquid staking token opened up restaking deposits for the first time, and within hours, had maxed out its self-imposed limit of 147,000 SOL, worth about $25 million, according to Jito’s website. Restaking protocols often place initial limits on the amount of assets users can deposit to ensure smooth operations, gauge interest, and generate buzz.

Jito’s restaking rollout helped the protocol reach an all-time high in TVL in both USD and SOL, per DefiLlama. At presstime, crypto users had deposited roughly 14.1 million SOL representing $2.4 billion into Jito, making up 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,” noted 21shares research analyst Tom Wan on X early Thursday. Solayer was the first protocol to offer Solana restaking and leads the market by a wide margin with a TVL of $274.6 million, according to a a Dune Analytics dashboard. In his post, Wan argued that the restaking market on Solana could eventually become as large as $3 billion to $10 billion.

Restaking entails extending the security provided by staked assets to additional applications and blockchain networks. Practically, users can stake their liquid staking tokens to earn more rewards from securing more than just the native blockchain, while networks can establish economic parameters for achieving consensus.

The advent of EigenLayer, which brought restaking to Ethereum in 2023, and the more recent arrival of Babylon for bitcoin in 2024 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 told 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 from 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.”

JTO, Jito’s governance token, has traded flat over both the past 24 hours and seven days, changing hands at $2.35 and giving it a market cap of $302 million, data from CoinGecko shows.