Solana’s Unstoppable Momentum Jito Labs CEO INTERVIEW

Solana’s infrastructure is improving on several fronts at once, Lucas Bruder said, with the Alpenglow consensus rewrite reducing finality from about 12 seconds to roughly 150–200 milliseconds. He said the upgrade rolled out around Wednesday. Capacity has risen from about 60 million to 100 million compute units, while slot times have fallen from 400 milliseconds to 200 milliseconds. Bruder expects further upgrades later this year and said another block-size increase could bring the network to about four times its earlier capacity by early to mid next year. He contrasted Solana’s roughly year-and-a-half path from Alpenglow’s concept to mainnet production with an approximately four-year Ethereum roadmap for consensus changes, arguing that faster infrastructure improvements should help applications and draw developers and projects to Solana more quickly.

Tokenized securities are another potential growth area. Bruder called the market a “gold rush,” pointing to projects including DTCC, Backpack, Ondo, and X Stocks, and said Solana’s mix of retail and institutional users positions it well. The host cited a JP Morgan update on tokenizing the Invesco Nasdaq 100 ETF and participation in a DTCC limited trade-production event, which the host described as involving real trades, assets, and value. The host said a DTCC launch was expected in October; the discussion did not establish whether that launch subsequently occurred.

Bruder sees Solana’s low latency, fees, and variety of tradable assets as a fit for AI agents, but said the trust question remains unresolved: users may hesitate to let an agent execute trades without approval. He cited a JTX SOL/USDC trade notification that arrived faster than a Coinbase notification in his comparison, and said confirmations under 200 milliseconds can make an on-chain application feel web-like. Jito is still defining how to integrate AI into JTX. The app is currently spot-only, allowing long positions without leverage, while the team considers perps, shorting, and leverage across crypto, equities, and commodities. Bruder said a cash on-ramp was expected shortly and three or four major app features were planned for the next two months. The mobile version remains in development, with iOS and Apple account approval among the longer steps.

Bruder argued that on-chain spot assets can make Solana perps more useful as collateral. He pointed to Phoenix perps adding spot SOL collateral after previously supporting only USDC, and said Solana’s composability allows assets to be used across perps, borrowing, and other applications on the same blockchain. He also described Solana’s prop AMMs as professional market makers that function roughly like on-chain order books. Meme coins, he said, often start on Pump.fun and then migrate to Raydium or Orca. He was skeptical that Uniswap could attract enough liquidity and volume to a new Solana DEX in competitive pairs such as SOL/USDC, and said adapting its EVM-focused code for Solana would require a rewrite.

Jito is pursuing institutional liquid staking, and Bruder said the company has a strong chance to lead that market. He cited integrations and deals with Coinbase, Anchorage, and FalconX, along with access through qualified custodians. He identified Bitwise as leading the Solana ETF effort and said Jito buybacks were expected within the next few weeks. Separately, the interviewer said Bitmine was approaching 5% of Solana’s supply and planned to cap its holdings at 5%. These developments point to growing institutional interest, though the discussion did not establish how much that interest will translate into future adoption or demand.