The Jito Foundation Comes Home

I touched back down over the weekend from a week in Abu Dhabi at Breakpoint ‘25 and thought one thing: It’s good to be home. The week with builders and community and thousands from the Solana ecosystem gave me and the entire Jito team renewed energy. And it also reinforced something we, and so many others across Solana and the larger crypto industry, have spent the last year (if not years) building: a solid home for crypto in America. 

Today, we’re announcing our work to make that reality: we are bringing the core operations of the Jito Foundation to US soil.

This post walks through a bit of what we all know about the crypto regulatory environment in the U.S. in the half a decade before 2025, why we think now is the time to commit more resources and people in the U.S. on the Foundation side, and what we’re actually doing about it: having a U.S.-based Jito Foundation that supports the growth of the network.

We’ll celebrate this milestone with a party in DC in January that will bring together builders, policymakers, regulators, DeFi educators, researchers, and the broader community of allies that made this historic moment possible. 

History

In November 2024, former SEC Chair Gary Gensler announced he was stepping down. After years of regulatory hostility that drove talent and innovation abroad (regardless of what the NYT said about it last week), the door slowly opened to thinking about growing the crypto industry in the U.S., and bringing companies and projects that had deliberately offshored efforts or operations back here.

For years, many crypto organizations were unable to operate essential business functions domestically. This is now part of our industry’s known history: Banks declined to provide services (later acknowledged as a deliberate pattern known as “Operation Chokepoint 2.0”). Vendors refused to enter contracts with U.S.-based crypto companies. Investors, lawyers and regulators warned that maintaining a U.S. footprint introduced material and outsized risks: the “cost of doing business” was unclear rules and an unpredictable, aggressive enforcement posture. 

Also part of our DNA is the widescale and almost industry-wide decision to offshore core operations by establishing separate non-U.S. entities, often run by entirely separate teams with little connection to the core software or products. In many cases, only software development remained onshore, a function understood to be protected under the First Amendment. This approach became industry standard for companies operating in the crypto space. And was true for the Jito Network and the original Jito Foundation as well.

The material effect of this approach placed the United States at a significant competitive disadvantage. America’s share of worldwide blockchain developers fell from 25 percent in 2021 to just 18 percent today. High-income technical roles moved overseas. The lost economic value is considerable, but perhaps more importantly, the United States ceded oversight of the evolution of its capital markets.

America has led every major technological revolution of the last century, from the microchip to the internet. Capricious regulatory treatment of digital assets risked disrupting that trend. 

Fortunately, that trajectory now appears reversible. And we want to be an additional catalyst in turning the tide.

The Next Phase

Recent actions by policymakers have given the United States an opportunity to embrace this technology and build it domestically. Congress passed the GENIUS Act, creating a clear framework for stablecoins, the first comprehensive legislation of its kind. The President’s Working Group on Digital Assets laid out a roadmap for onshore development, and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle continue working toward market-structure legislation for crypto, which we’re supporting through our own policy efforts.

With this more productive approach to innovation, one focused on clear laws and guardrails for consumers and market participants, crypto operations, projects and business can and should return to operating in the United States.

And that’s what we’re announcing today: the Jito Foundation is bringing core activities onshore in the U.S. This is not merely a legal or structural change; it is a statement of belief in the American project itself, that given the chance, the United States will choose innovation, freedom, and leadership.

The crypto renaissance will not be built abroad by necessity. It can be built here, by Americans, for the world, with the transparency and accountability that both the industry and the country deserve.

The Jito Foundation looks forward to celebrating its footprint in the U.S. and engaging with policymakers, regulators, and the broader crypto community as this next chapter unfolds.