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Continuing a string of recent hires, Jito Foundation has appointed Nick Almond as its head of governance, Lightspeed has learned exclusively.
An academic by training, Almond comes to Jito following a stint as CEO of the DAO-focused R&D shop Factory Labs. In comments shared with me, Almond said he hopes to steer Jito’s DAO clear of some common pitfalls that have befallen these organizations by “cautiously expanding” what the DAO tries to do.
Jito is Solana’s most important infrastructure project. Its Jito-Solana client, which adds revenue-boosting MEV modifications to the original Solana Labs client, is run by 96% of Solana stake.
Jito has a labs entity, which develops software, and a foundation entity, which tries to grow Jito’s ecosystem of products and oversees the Jito DAO. Both sides have been staffing up recently: Jito Labs brought on veteran DeFi-focused lawyer Rebecca Rettig as its chief legal officer in January, and Jito Foundation made Jane Street veteran Thomas Uhm its chief commercial officer in April.
The headcount growth likely has something to do with Jito’s central positioning to benefit from Solana’s uptick in network usage. A majority of Solana’s REV, a Blockworks Research metric for value accrual to blockchains, comes from Jito tips that users pay to get transactions included in Solana blocks.
Jito also boasts perhaps Solana’s most advanced DAO, which has a lucrative revenue source vis-à-vis its 2.7% cut of those Jito tips. To put that in perspective, Jito tips were on pace to total roughly $1.5 billion this year at the end of April. 2.7% of that number would put Jito DAO at roughly $40 million in annual revenue.
Almond said Jito DAO’s “high potential” drew him to the role. I asked him about the favored governance mechanism among Solana governance nerds in futarchy, which he said still needs to “prove itself as an effective decision-making mechanism.”
Probably the first question Almond will need to answer in his new role will deal with value accrual for the JTO token, which Jito launched in 2023 but which does not yet directly benefit from Jito revenue. Almond moderated multiple livestreams on JTO’s tokenomics before joining Jito Foundation.
“Fee switches, yield boosting mechanisms and buybacks have all been discussed heavily,” Almond said. “It’s going to be up to the DAO which direction we take very soon. I’d like to see one of and potentially more of the above, all implemented as quickly as possible.”
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