What if opening a trading account was as easy as downloading an app?

Lucas Bruder, CEO of Jito — a Solana-based liquid staking protocol — breaks down why he thinks all of finance is moving onchain, and what his small team is doing to make that happen.

During the 2022-2023 bear market, Jito was getting pitched constantly to jump ship to other chains. Lucas explains why they turned everything down, doubled down on Solana, and chewed a lot of glass.

We also cover how Jito acts like a Cloudflare for Solana, why cheap transactions create surprising problems, what convinced Lucas that the Solana engineers were in it for the right reasons, and his vision for a financial system anyone can access with just a phone.

Follow Jito: https://www.jito.network/

Follow Lucas: https://x.com/buffalu__

Highlights

0:00 — Intro
0:49 — What is Jito and why does it exist
1:11 — Why Solana transactions are less than a penny
2:00 — What attracted Lucas to Solana from Ethereum
2:39 — How Jito is like Cloudflare for blockchains
5:02 — The $1,500 Ethereum transaction fee problem
7:21 — The vision: all of finance onchain
7:46 — Onchain vs. opening a Robinhood account
8:37 — Lucas's journey from robotics to crypto
9:55 — Solana's rate of improvement and Anatoly's Law
10:44 — The pitch for people new to crypto
15:00 — Staying lean at 21 people
15:17 — Nicotine as a productivity hack
15:58 — Sleep, alcohol, and the Oura ring
16:40 — Smallest hill you'll die on: littering and shopping carts

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Why Solana keeps getting faster — and what's next (ft. Jito Labs CEO Lucas Bruder)

a16z crypto show

Why Solana keeps getting faster — and what's next (ft. Jito Labs CEO Lucas Bruder)