Updated 2026-09-11
Key takeaways
- jitoSOL appreciates in exchange rate over time as staking and MEV rewards accrue, rather than increasing your token balance directly.
- You can unstake by swapping jitoSOL on a DEX (fast, subject to liquidity) or through Jito's native unstake flow (slower, avoids market liquidity risk).
- jitoSOL is accepted as lending collateral and tradeable on major DEXs, but each additional use adds its own layer of risk on top of base staking risk.
- Native unstaking has an unbonding delay, so don't stake funds you might need back on short notice unless you're comfortable exiting via a DEX swap instead.
Staking through Jito gets you jitoSOL — a liquid, appreciating token — in exchange for SOL that Jito delegates across its validator set on your behalf, passing through both standard staking rewards and a share of captured MEV. Here’s the actual step-by-step.
Step by step
- Connect a self-custody wallet (Phantom, Solflare, or similar) holding SOL to Jito’s official staking interface — verify the domain before connecting anything.
- Enter the amount of SOL you want to stake. Leave enough SOL unstaked in your wallet to cover transaction fees for this and future transactions.
- Review the transaction in your wallet’s simulation before confirming — it should show SOL leaving your wallet and jitoSOL arriving.
- Confirm the transaction. You’ll receive jitoSOL, generally at an exchange rate that appreciates relative to SOL over time as staking (and MEV) rewards accrue, rather than through a rebasing balance increase.
What you can do with jitoSOL afterward
Once you hold jitoSOL, you’re not locked into simply holding it — it’s accepted as collateral on several Solana lending markets, tradeable on major DEXs and aggregators like Jupiter, and usable in liquidity pools if you want to earn additional trading-fee yield on top of your staking rewards. Each additional use adds its own layer of risk on top of the base liquid staking risk — using jitoSOL as lending collateral, for instance, adds liquidation risk to depeg risk.
Unstaking
To convert back to SOL, you can either swap jitoSOL for SOL directly on a DEX (fastest, subject to available liquidity and current market price, which should track close to fair value but isn’t guaranteed to during stress), or use Jito’s native unstake flow, which follows Solana’s standard unstaking/unbonding process and takes longer but avoids relying on market liquidity.
Things to check before staking a large amount
- Current jitoSOL liquidity and trading volume, if you might want to exit via a DEX swap rather than native unstaking.
- Whether you plan to use jitoSOL elsewhere in DeFi afterward, and what additional risk that introduces.
- Your own timeline — native unstaking has an unbonding delay, so don’t stake funds you might need back on short notice unless you’re comfortable exiting via a DEX swap instead.
See our complete liquid staking guide and LST depeg risk guide for the broader risk picture.