MarsBit on July 17 published a long-form market analysis arguing that Jito DAO’s latest governance proposal and the rise of Ethereum treasury-company funding point to a broader shift in how token ecosystems may be financed. The piece was written by Edgy and Yayya and translated by TechFlow.
The article makes two main claims. First, Jito’s new proposal matters because it sends revenue through a token-governed pipeline instead of leaving value allocation to a company board. Second, Ethereum treasury companies such as Bitmine and SharpLink have started stepping into protocol-development funding as the Ethereum Foundation scales back spending.
JIP-38 would formalize Jito as a token-centric network
According to the article, Jito DAO published JIP-38 on July 13, formally defining Jito as a “token-centric network.” In that structure, major project revenue flows to the DAO, stays under token governance, and gives the token hard economic rights over how that revenue is used.
The specific commitment is that JTX revenue allocated to the DAO would be used 100% for open-market buybacks and burns of JTO. JTX is Jito’s new self-custodial trading app for professional traders. The day after the proposal was published, JTX opened to users on its waitlist. The arrangement would run for at least one year and continue through the fourth quarter of 2027, when token holders would vote again using at least a year of operating data.
The article breaks the proposal into several token-holder benefits:
- 80% of JTX platform fees would go to the DAO.
- The remaining 20% would be retained, but could only be reinvested into the platform that generated the revenue.
- The DAO’s full share would be used to buy and burn JTO rather than sit in treasury.
- Execution would be handled by a “Rev Splitter,” with fees, purchases, and burns disclosed onchain each epoch.
The piece says that may sound familiar. It compares the setup with arguments Erik Voorhees made in defense of Venice. Venice sold $65 million in equity and promised more burns. Jito, by contrast, raised $50 million from a16z in October last year and reportedly has cash well above $100 million on its balance sheet. In both cases, there is an equity layer and a token layer, and both projects say revenue will be directed toward the token.
Why the article treats Jito and Venice differently
Where revenue lands
The first distinction is where the money ends up. The article says Venice revenue belongs to the Venice team. Aside from a small automatic burn, about $166,000 in April, the rest of the burn amount is decided monthly by the board, and the board owes fiduciary duties to shareholders rather than token holders.
Jito fees, by comparison, would enter the DAO treasury onchain. JIP-38 explicitly states that the token has “hard economic rights” over capital deployment. In the article’s framing, once the money reaches an address governed by token holders, burning stops being a gesture of goodwill and becomes part of the system.
Whether token holders can remove operators
The article says it checked who controls Jito’s buyback machinery and found that, for now, people still do. The Rev Splitter is actively managed by the Development Committee, a small body authorized by the DAO. The proposal promises gradual automation and decentralization in the future, but does not yet include a detailed implementation plan.
Even so, the article argues that the leash is real. The committee’s authority sits under the revocable permissions structure introduced in JIP-36. One governance vote plus a 12-hour timelock is enough to remove that authority. The piece contrasts that with Venice: if the Venice board reduced burns to zero, VVV holders could complain on X; if a Jito committee misbehaved, JTO holders could remove it within 12 hours.
Whether money has actually moved from the company to the token
The article also points to Jito’s operating history. Before August 2025, Jito’s 6% block engine fee was split evenly between Jito Labs and the DAO, 3% each. JIP-24 later redirected the full 6% to the DAO on a “permanent” basis, with Labs giving up that revenue stream.
JIP-38 extends the same pattern to JTX from day one. That leads the article to a simple contrast: Venice’s Series A put another layer of equity claims above token holders, while Jito’s equity layer has been cutting back its own claims over time.
The proposal still carries caveats
The article does not present JIP-38 as fully settled. JTX has only just opened to 1,000 users, so its current cash flow is, in the article’s words, effectively close to zero. At this stage, the proposal is more a signal about where future value will flow than a mechanism distributing large existing revenue.
It also notes that the proposal does not specify who ultimately receives the 20% development allocation, though it says that money will most likely end up with Jito Labs, which is building JTX. The one-year term also looks short to some forum members, who have already asked for the structure to be extended to five years. Labs, the foundation, and their investors also hold large amounts of JTO, so “token holders decide” partly means insiders decide.
Even with those qualifications, the article says revenue from existing products such as JitoSOL and BAM already goes to the DAO, which it treats as a strong positive signal.
The framework the article proposes for judging token value capture
The piece says investors should stop grading presentations and start grading pipelines. It reduces the question to three tests:
- Where does revenue legally end up: a company account or a token-governed address?
- Who can turn off the burn mechanism, and can token holders remove that person?
- Has money actually moved from the company’s pocket to the token before?
On that score, the article says Venice fails the first two questions, while Jito passes all three, with an asterisk that control is still human-operated today.
stBTC and the attempt to bring liquid staking to Bitcoin
In a sponsored section, the article highlights stBTC. It says liquid staking is one of crypto’s best-validated sectors, noting that Lido alone has more than $17 billion in TVL and that ETH holders have been able to earn staking yield without giving up liquidity for years.
Bitcoin holders have not had a direct equivalent because Bitcoin historically lacked a reliable native staking mechanism that could be wrapped. That, the article says, is starting to change. Stacks is preparing to launch Bitcoin Staking, and StackingDAO’s stBTC is designed as the liquid token on top of it, allowing BTC to earn staking yield while still moving through the Stacks ecosystem.
The expected base yield at launch is around 2.6%. The article says StackingDAO has operated STX stacking infrastructure for more than two years, managed over $150 million in staked capital at peak, served more than 40,000 stakers, and recorded zero security incidents. stBTC has not launched yet and is expected shortly before Bitcoin Staking goes live on Stacks.
Ethereum’s development funding is shifting
The second major section of the article focuses on Ethereum. It says the Ethereum Foundation is stepping back because of treasury sustainability concerns, while new players are moving in. Treasury companies are beginning to finance Ethereum’s next phase, which the article argues could be one of the best things to happen to ETH in years.
It lays out a short timeline:
- June 22: ETH Labs was formed as a nonprofit research and development institution by five former Ethereum Foundation researchers who had worked on finality, scaling, and protocol economics.
- June 23: The Ethereum Foundation cut staff by 20%, reduced its 2026 budget by 40%, and reorganized into five working clusters.
- July 1: Ethereum Institutional launched as a nonprofit front door for banks and asset managers entering Ethereum, with ecosystem marketing and ETH asset marketing among its priorities.
- July 14: EthSystems was formed as a for-profit company building confidential transaction systems for banks, run by the Ethereum Foundation’s former institutional privacy working group.
The article says the same three names appear behind each of those press releases: Bitmine, SharpLink, and Joe Lubin.
Who the backers are
Bitmine is described as Tom Lee’s digital asset treasury company. It holds 5.77 million ETH, about 4.8% of circulating supply. The article puts that another way: roughly one out of every 21 ETH in existence sits on Bitmine’s balance sheet, and the company’s public target is to reach 5% of total supply.
SharpLink holds about 876,000 ETH, making it the second-largest corporate holder cited in the article. Its chairman, Joe Lubin, is also the founder of Consensys, which is behind MetaMask and Linea, and is an Ethereum co-founder.
The article argues that the question is not whether these companies matter. The question is why they have suddenly started writing checks for protocol research.
Why treasury companies changed course
The answer, according to the article, is that the old playbook no longer works as well. The key metric is mNAV, the multiple of a company’s stock price to the net asset value of its crypto holdings. When a company trades above the value of the ETH it holds, it can issue more shares, buy more ETH, and increase assets per share. That was the flywheel behind Bitmine’s buildout.
Now, the article says, that flywheel has frozen. The entire ETH treasury sector has seen mNAV fall below 1, meaning the market values these companies at less than the value of the ETH on their balance sheets. Issuing stock below NAV would dilute and hurt existing shareholders, so there is no new equity issuance, no new ETH buying, and no flywheel.
It adds that current holdings are also deeply underwater. Bitmine’s average entry price is about $3,883, and the ETH price at the time referenced in the article was less than half that level. SharpLink’s average cost is about $3,609, and its unrealized loss at one point during the previous drawdown exceeded $1 billion.
In that setting, the article says these companies have stopped waiting for the Ethereum Foundation to lift ETH and instead are moving directly into the work themselves. This is not framed as charity. It is presented as an attempt to build a system that can raise the value of their own balance sheets again.
The bull case for ETH holders
The bullish argument in the article is straightforward: ETH holders may get the spillover benefits for free. The Ethereum Foundation is deliberately shrinking. Vitalik is described as calling the spending cuts an intentional shift toward an “endowment model,” with annual spending as a share of capital falling from about 15% to 5% by 2030 so the foundation can survive any prolonged downturn.
That leaves a funding gap. Treasury companies, in the article’s telling, are filling it with money that can sustain itself. It cites a forecast of $284 million in annual staking yield for Bitmine, effectively a replenishing research-and-development budget that does not require selling any tokens. Tom Lee’s stated view, as quoted in the article, is that corporate stakers will provide funding assurance for Ethereum’s future development.
If that works, the flywheel turns the other way: institutional roadmap items get built, banks bring real flows, ETH demand gets repriced, and researchers receive multi-year funding. The article contrasts that with Strategy, which holds Bitcoin but does not fund Bitcoin development. ETH treasury companies, by comparison, are reinvesting staking yield into the protocol.
The bear case
The article also lays out the opposing side. No one has disclosed exact funding amounts. As of the time of writing, it is unclear how much money is actually being directed into Ethereum development. The market, the piece says, may be overestimating the impact of these funds.
It also warns that digital asset treasury companies are themselves fragile. Citing Pantera, the article says crypto treasury companies could face a “brutal culling” in 2026. If ETH keeps falling, the dollar value of staking income would shrink, mNAV could compress further, and those same companies could stop funding Ethereum.
Its conclusion is that the Ethereum Foundation stepping back does not mean Ethereum development is dying. It means the baton is changing hands. The new funders hold more ETH than almost anyone on earth, the article says, and they cannot dump it without hurting themselves. That does not make governance perfect, but it does create real alignment.
Product, DeFi, and market updates listed in the article
The piece also rounds up a wide set of ecosystem updates:
- Polymarket launched Combos, bringing parlay-style positions into prediction markets. Users can combine multiple sports outcomes into a single all-or-nothing trade priced through RFQ auctions.
- Aave launched Stable Vaults, turning floating lending rates into fixed-rate stablecoin yield products that companies can embed. Aave’s mobile savings feature is already using them.
- Plasma One released its new banking app on Android. Downloads before July 18 get six months of Core access for free.
- Ethena now lets mint users use USDC to mint and redeem USDe at no cost. The article says instant liquidity should reduce value leakage in secondary markets.
- Jito opened JTX to some waitlisted users, offering spot markets on Solana for meme coins, tokenized stocks, and major assets.
- Lido brought wstETH to Robinhood Chain, extending Ethereum staking yield into a new ecosystem.
- Maple said assets under management topped $200 million after syrupUSDG launched on Robinhood Chain, with Steakhouse approving it as collateral for the Robinhood Earn vault.
- Jupiter launched Gacha, putting graded Pokémon and One Piece collectible cards onchain, with prizes that can be worth several times the purchase amount and a top reward of $100,000.
- Tempo introduced Receive Policies so accounts can reject unwanted tokens and restrict senders, with rules enforced at the protocol level.
- RHEA Finance on July 15 launched Perp Confidential Deposit, allowing users to keep trading through existing accounts and Hyperliquid liquidity while hiding deposit information.
- Jito JIP-38 commits at least through Q4 2027 to use 100% of the DAO’s JTX revenue share for programmatic buybacks and burns of JTO. The DAO’s share is 80% of platform fees.
- Hyperliquid’s HIP-3 market grew from about 2% of perpetual volume in January to nearly 50%, according to the article. It also notes that stock, commodity, and index markets on the platform reached $3 billion in volume over the last seven days, versus $3.1 billion for native crypto perpetuals.
- Securitize tokenized $295 million worth of its own SECZ shares while listing on the New York Stock Exchange, becoming the first U.S. public company to do so at the time of listing, according to the article.
- Galaxy launched Galaxy Onchain Financing Rate, or GOFR, to offer institutions DeFi credit through a single continuously rebalanced rate without needing to manage wallets or private keys. The minimum loan size is $1 million, and native BTC can be used as collateral.
Airdrops and industry headlines
- Lighter allocated $11 million worth of LIT to Robinhood Chain traders. Perpetual traders can earn points and convert them into LIT, with a 2x multiplier for users participating through Robinhood Wallet.
- Kamino launched a $300,000 rewards campaign around three-month USDG deposits, with Steakhouse and Global Dollar Network as partners.
- GRVT’s airdrop registration closes on July 17, with TGE set for July 21. Users can claim at TGE or delay the claim for up to a 4x multiplier, and the choice cannot be changed.
- Jupiter stakers can claim 50 million JUP from second-quarter Active Staking Rewards. Eligibility requires an average quarterly stake of 50 JUP, and the claim window closes on Oct. 8.
- The Transatlantic Working Group saw the U.S. Treasury and U.K. Treasury publish a joint 10-point roadmap to coordinate rules for tokenized assets and cross-border stablecoins.
- Swift said its blockchain ledger is ready for initial use, with 17 banks from six continents preparing pilot transactions with tokenized deposits.
- Kaito Pro added stock data, giving users a single interface to track sentiment, prices, and investment theses across more than 3,000 global equities.
- SBI Holdings partnered with the Solana Foundation to build Japan’s first onchain financial market, including the yen stablecoin JPYSC, tokenized real-world assets from corporate bonds to real estate, and cross-border settlement infrastructure.
- Bonzo Lend, the largest lending protocol on Hedera, was attacked through a Supra oracle validator vulnerability and lost about $9.05 million. The protocol has been paused and TVL fell 77%.
- Circle received final approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to establish First National Digital Currency Bank, N.A. Custody of USDC and future reserve management will fall under direct federal supervision.
The article ends with a meme captioned: “I sold” on the top line, and “I increased dollar reserves” on the bottom.