Proposal
JIP-38: Making Jito a Token-Centric Network
“We have equity, but we’ll drive value to the token.”
Venice said it two weeks ago. CT torched them. Jito said it this week. CT cheered.
Here’s the difference between the two projects. (We already covered Venice story on July 2nd. So, won’t repeat those details here.)
What happened? On July 13, the Jito DAO published JIP-38, a proposal that formally defines Jito as a “token-centric network”: one where “all major project revenues flow to the DAO and are governed by the token, which holds hard economic rights over their deployment.”
The concrete commitment: 100% of the DAO’s revenue share from JTX (Jito’s new self-custody trading app for advanced traders, which went live to its waitlist users the next day) goes to buying JTO on the open market and burning it. For at least a year, through Q4 2027.
Quick 80/20 on what JTO holders got:
- 80% of JTX platform fees flow to the DAO. The other 20% is “retained, and only for reinvestment in the platform that generates them.”
- The DAO’s full share gets used to buy JTO and burn it. Supply down, not treasury games.
- Execution runs through a “Rev Splitter” that collects fees and executes buybacks, with fees, purchases, and burns reported every epoch on-chain.
- Tokenholders re-vote the whole arrangement in Q4 2027 with a year of data in hand.
Sounds familiar, right? It’s Erik Voorhees’ defense brief. Venice sold $65M of equity and promised bigger burns. Jito raised $50M from a16z last October and sits on “well north of $100 million” in cash. Both are equity companies pointing revenue at a token.
So why am I treating them differently? Three reasons.
1. The revenue lands in different pockets.
Venice’s revenue belongs to the Venice team. Burns beyond the tiny automatic slice (~$166K in April) are a monthly board decision, and that board owes fiduciary duty to shareholders, not to you.
Jito’s fees route on-chain to the DAO treasury, where JIP-38 says the token holds “hard economic rights” over deployment. When the money arrives at an address tokenholders govern, the burn isn’t generosity. It’s policy.
2. You can fire the treasury operator.
I checked who actually controls Jito’s buyback machine. The honest answer? Humans still run it.
Fortunately, the Rev Splitter “operates under active Dev Council management,” a small DAO-delegated council, and the proposal only promises to “progressively automate and decentralise” it over time. No concrete plan yet.
But the leash is real. The council’s mandate sits inside JIP-36’s revocable authority architecture: a single governance vote with a 12-hour timelock strips its authority.
If Venice’s board dials burns to zero, VVV holders can tweet about it. If Jito’s council misbehaves, JTO holders can fire them in 12 hours.
3. Money has already moved toward the token. Twice.
Before August 2025, Jito’s 6% block engine fee split evenly: 3% to Jito Labs, 3% to the DAO. JIP-24 routed the full 6% to the DAO “in perpetuity.” Labs gave up its own revenue line.
JIP-38 extends the pattern to the newest product on day one. Venice’s Series A added an equity claim on top of tokenholders. Jito’s equity keeps subtracting its own claims.
That history gives more credibility to Jito. If Venice needs similar credibility, they should set up automated buybacks on recurring subscriber revenue as well.
Now the catch.
JTX has only just launched to 1,000 users. So, cashflow from it rounds to zero. This is a signal about where future value goes, not current value. The 20% development cut has no named recipient in the proposal. Obviously, it’ll go to Jito Labs, which is building JTX.
One year is short. Forum members are already pushing for five. And Labs, the Foundation, and their investors hold plenty of JTO, so “tokenholders decide” partly means insiders decide.
To be fair, I do have to mention that the revenue from existing Jito products like JitoSOL and BAM already goes to the DAO. So, that’s a great sign.
Why does this matter beyond Jito? Because most crypto projects have both equity and token layers. Everyone will claim “value accrues to the token”. And you can’t trust them blindly.
Don’t grade the pitch. Grade the plumbing. Three questions:
- Where does the revenue legally land: a corporate account, or an address the token governs?
- Who can turn the burns off, and can you fire them?
- Has money ever actually moved from the company’s pocket to the token’s?
Venice fails the first two, and CT noticed. Jito passes all three, with an asterisk on the humans still holding the controls.
Sponsored by Stacks
stBTC: Liquid Staking Comes to Bitcoin
Liquid staking is one of the most proven sectors in crypto. Lido alone holds over $17B in TVL. ETH holders have earned yield on staked capital for years, without giving up liquidity.
Bitcoin holders never got their version. Bitcoin had no reliable native staking to wrap.
That’s changing. Stacks is shipping Bitcoin Staking, and StackingDAO’s stBTC is the liquid token on top: your BTC earns staking yield while staying free to move across the Stacks ecosystem.
The expected base yield at launch is around 2.6%. That won’t melt your face, but it beats the 0% your BTC has earned since 2009.
This isn’t a fresh team degening with your BTC. StackingDAO has run STX stacking infrastructure for over 2 years, managing $150M+ in peak staked capital for 40,000+ stakers with zero security incidents.
stBTC isn’t live yet. It launches just before Stacks’ Bitcoin Staking release. So it’s coming soon.
News
Your $ETH Has a New Management Team
Ethereum Foundation is stepping back due to treasury concerns.
But new players are stepping up. Treasury companies are funding Ethereum’s next chapter, and it might be the best thing to happen to $ETH in years.
What happened? Quick 80/20 on the timeline:
- June 22:ETH Labs launches. A nonprofit R&D lab staffed by five former Ethereum Foundation researchers, the people who worked on finality, scaling, and protocol economics.
- June 23: The Ethereum Foundation cuts 20% of its staff and 40% of its 2026 budget, and reorganizes into five clusters.
- July 1:Ethereum Institutional launches. A nonprofit “front door” for banks and asset managers. Its focus areas include ecosystem and ETH marketing. Yes, marketing the asset.
- July 14:EthSystems launches. A for-profit company building confidential transaction systems for banks, run by the team behind the Foundation’s Institutional Privacy Task Force.
Three organizations. One month. And the same three names anchor every press release: Bitmine (NYSE: BMNR), SharpLink (Nasdaq: SBET), and Joe Lubin.
Who are these guys? Bitmine is Tom Lee’s Digital Asset Treasury (DAT) company. It holds 5.77 million ETH, about 4.8% of the entire circulating supply. Roughly 1 out of every 21 ETH in existence sits on one company’s balance sheet, and its stated target is 5%.
SharpLink holds ~876,000 ETH, the second-biggest corporate stack. Its chairman is Joe Lubin, who also founded Consensys (MetaMask, Linea) and co-founded Ethereum itself.
So the question isn’t whether these companies matter. It’s why they suddenly started writing checks for protocol research.
Why DATs became Ethereum’s venture arm
The honest answer: their old playbook wasn’t enough.
Treasury companies live and die by one number, mNAV: the ratio of their stock price to the crypto they hold. When the stock trades above the value of the ETH, they issue shares, buy more ETH, and every share gets more valuable. That’s the flywheel that built Bitmine’s stack.
That flywheel is frozen. mNAVs across the ETH treasury sector fell below 1, meaning the market values these companies at less than their own holdings. Issuing shares below NAV burns your existing shareholders. So no new shares, no new ETH, no flywheel.
And the holdings themselves are deep underwater. Bitmine accumulated at an average price around $3,883. The current $ETH price is less than half its average entry. SharpLink’s average entry is ~$3,609, with unrealized losses that crossed $1 billion during the last correction.
Waiting for the Ethereum Foundation to pump $ETH wasn’t working out. So, they’re taking it into their own hands to pump $ETH.
They’re not blindly donating. They’re building the thing that reflates their own balance sheet.
The bull case: someone finally pays for the roadmap
Here’s the version where ETH holders free-ride on all of this.
The Foundation is shrinking on purpose. Vitalik frames the cuts as a deliberate shift to an endowment model: spending drops from roughly 15% of its funds a year toward 5% by 2030, so the EF survives any winter. Noble. But it leaves a funding hole exactly when Wall Street is showing up.
The treasuries fill that hole with money that renews itself. Bitmine’s projected $284M a year in staking rewards is an R&D budget that refills every year without selling a single token. Tom Lee’s framing: corporate stakers will underwrite Ethereum’s future development.
If this works, the flywheel spins the right way. Institutional roadmap ships, banks bring real flows, ETH demand re-rates, and the researchers doing the work have multi-year funding.
Unlike Strategy, which holds bitcoin and funds zero Bitcoin development, ETH treasuries are recycling their yield into the protocol. That’s massively bullish for $ETH.
The bear case
Now, we do have to look from the other side.
No amounts disclosed anywhere. At the time of writing, we don’t know how much actual money is allocated for $ETH development. Maybe we’re over-estimating the impact of these funds, and there could only be very little money actually allocated here.
DAT companies are fragile. Pantera is warning of a “brutal pruning” of crypto treasury firms in 2026. If ETH keeps falling, staking yield shrinks in dollar terms, and mNAV compresses further, these companies themselves will stop funding $ETH.
Here’s where I land: the EF stepping back isn’t the death of Ethereum development. It’s the handoff.
The new funders hold more ETH than anyone on the planet. They can’t dump on you without dumping on themselves. That’s not perfect governance, but it’s real alignment.
🚀 DeFi Catalysts
Polymarket brought parlays to prediction markets with Combos: stack sports legs into one all-or-nothing position, priced by market makers through an RFQ auction.
Aave introduced Stable Vaults, which convert its variable lending rates into fixed-rate stablecoin yield any business can embed. They already power the savings feature in Aave’s mobile app.
Plasma One, their neobank app, is now live on Android. Downloads before July 18 get six months of the Core tier free.
Ethena mint user is now able to mint & redeem USDe with USDC for free. This instant liquidity is expected to result in less value leakage on secondary markets
Jito‘s trading platform JTX is now live for selected waitlist users with Solana spot markets for memes, tokenized equities, and majors.
Lido‘s wstETH went live on Robinhood Chain, carrying its Ethereum staking rewards into the new ecosystem.
Maple‘s syrupUSDG climbed past $200M in AUM after launching on Robinhood Chain. Steakhouse approved it as collateral for the Robinhood Earn vault.
Jupiter‘s new Gacha brings graded Pokémon and One Piece slabs onchain. Pulls can be worth multiples of what you paid, with rewards up to $100K.
Tempo now lets accounts refuse unwanted tokens and restrict senders via Receive Policies, enforced at the protocol level instead of the app layer.
RHEA Finance launched Perp Confidential Deposit on July 15: trade with Hyperliquid liquidity through your existing account while keeping deposits private.
Jito‘s JIP-38 proposal commits 100% of the DAO’s JTX revenue share to programmatic JTO buybacks and burns through at least Q4 2027. The DAO’s share is 80% of JTX platform fees.
Hyperliquid‘s HIP-3 markets have grown from roughly 2% of perp volume in January to nearly 50% now. Onchain stock perps are now rivaling crypto trading on the platform.
Securitize listed on the NYSE and simultaneously tokenized $295M of its own SECZ stock, the first US public company to do so at listing.
Galaxy introduced the Galaxy Onchain Financing Rate (GOFR), giving institutions DeFi credit at one continuously rebalanced rate with no wallets or keys to manage. Minimum loan size is $1 million, and native BTC works as collateral.
🪂 Airdrop Alpha
Lighter committed $11M in LIT to Robinhood Chain traders. Perp trading earns points that convert to LIT, with a 2x multiplier through Robinhood Wallet.
Kamino is running a $300K rewards campaign on USDG deposits over three months, with Steakhouse and Global Dollar Network.
GRVT‘s airdrop registration closes July 17, ahead of the July 21 TGE. Take your allocation at TGE or defer it for up to a 4x multiplier; choices are final.
Jupiter stakers can claim their share of 50M JUP from Q2 Active Staking Rewards. Eligibility is a 50 JUP average stake over the quarter; the window closes October 8.
📰 Industry News
The Transatlantic Taskforce (US Treasury and HM Treasury) published a joint 10-point roadmap to align rules for tokenized assets and cross-border stablecoins.
Swift announced that its blockchain is ready for initial use. 17 banks from six continents are now preparing to pilot live txns using tokenised deposits.
Kaito has released stock data on Kaito Pro. You can now track over 3,000 global stocks: sentiment, price, thesis, and more, all in one place.
SBI Holdings partnered with the Solana Foundation to build Japan’s first onchain financial market: a yen stablecoin (JPYSC), tokenized RWAs from corporate bonds to real estate, and cross-border settlement rails.
Bonzo Lend, Hedera’s largest lending protocol, was exploited for ~$9.05 million through a flaw in Supra’s oracle verifier. The protocol is paused, and its TVL has dropped 77%.
Circle received final OCC approval to open First National Digital Currency Bank, N.A. The trust bank puts USDC custody, and eventually its reserve management, under direct federal oversight.
🐦⬛ X Hits
- Robinhood’s fork in the road.
- What’s Robinhood’s big picture strategy?
- Crazy proposal to increase agentic demand for blockspace.
😂 Meme
Until next time,
Edgy
Today’s email was written by Edgy and Yayya.
DISCLAIMER: I’m NOT a financial advisor. This content is for education and information purposes only. Crypto and DeFi are risky and speculative. Please do your research before investing.
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