Jito Proposal to Blacklist Validators Set for Unanimous Approval

Amidst ongoing concerns surrounding MEV’s impact on the Solana network, Jito has opened voting on its latest governance proposal, JIP-15.

If passed, JIP-15 will greenlight the formation of an expert working group tasked with evaluating and enforcing a pre-described blacklist targeting over 220 validators.

While it’s still early days, JIP-15 is expected to pass with flying colors.

100% of Voters Support JIP-15

Despite over 4 days remaining before voting officially closes, Jito’s latest governance proposal, JIP-15, is set for unanimous approval. According to Realms data, 100% of voters are in favor of the proposal.

JIP-15 represents Jito’s latest endeavor in the endless war against Solana MEV operators. Should JIP-15 pass as expected, a working group will review the findings of Jito Labs’ ongoing investigation into MEV activity. The investigation claims ~14% of Jito Stake Pool validators are currently engaging in private mempool participation.

Comprising some of the validator community’s biggest names, including Laine’s Michael Hubbard and SolStrategies CTO Max Kaplan, the working group is responsible for evaluating the criteria used to create a proposed blacklist featuring over 220 validators.

The working group has been given jurisdiction to remove certain validators from the list if they deem the inclusion criteria too harsh. Conversely, no new validators can be added to the list. Following its analysis, the working group will decide whether or not to enforce the blacklist.

Over 56k $SOL Extracted in Last 30 Days

Despite diminishing onchain activity due to turbulent market conditions, Solana’s MEV operators remain as active as ever. 

According to sandwiched.me data, MEV operators have extracted over 56,774 $SOL, currently valued at $7.8M, across over 414k sandwiches.

While blacklisting MEV operators might seem like a sensible solution, some network participants argue that its a temporary measure. Speaking with SolanaFloor previously on the subject, BloXroute CEO and Paladin operator Uri Klarman stipulated that nothing stopped affected operators from simply launching a new validator.

“There's very little value to "blacklisting" validators, since after each blacklist the validator can spin up a fresh new validator and bid for stake” - Uri Klarman, bloXroute CEO.

Meanwhile, protocols like Paladin offer an alternative approach to MEV mitigation. Built on top of the Jito client, Paladin incentivizes validators to drop sandwich transactions in their blocks.

At press time, 205 validators are now running Paladin, constituting 13.91% of network stake and securing $7.3B worth of value onchain.

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