November 13, 2025
The shutdown ended, but Crypto Twitter was focused on the Chair of the SEC while a team behind a Solana network infrastructure provider gave some forward guidance.
Welcome to the Meridian Update. The government shutdown is over. Meanwhile, Crypto Twitter was and remains open. Let’s dive in.
Time to SEC what’s happening in regulatory
“...nothing really happened on the regulatory front during the government shutdown. Why? Well, the SEC and the CFTC are, you know, part of the government. And they were shut down. One law firm partner described the SEC’s work on rulemaking and more as being brought to a ‘screeching halt.’”
Sure. That’s about right. Anyone could’ve said that. But! But. But. We also wrote this:
“The government shutdown is not actually over. But it does look like it might be. And you know what that means? We may see some SEC and CFTC activity catch our attention and that of Crypto Twitter. Something to keep an eye on.”
“When I spoke recently about American leadership in the digital finance revolution, I described “Project Crypto” as our effort to match the energy of American innovators with a regulatory framework worthy of them. Today, I would like to outline the next step in that journey. At its core, this next step is about basic fairness and common sense as it relates to the application of the federal securities laws to crypto assets and related transactions.”
The SEC Chair went on to discuss three things that Crypto Twitter called “a big win” for the ecosystem. The first was his “token taxonomy.” He directly said on-chain assets that are digital commodities, digital collectibles, and digital tools are not, in his opinion, securities. Tokenized securities are securities. The second was an explicit discussion of an on-chain asset’s ability to be an investment contract, and as such a security, then for that investment contract to end and for that asset to no longer be a security. Once a security, not always a security. Third, he made clear his interest in action on further regulatory clarity and specificity, from both the SEC and legislation. The on-chain world remains a priority for the Chair of the SEC.
It’s hard to overstate how remarkable all of this is to hear from a Chair of the SEC. A decade ago, on-chain assets were simply unimportant. A few years ago the SEC was…not too into crypto. Now, the SEC is thinking about on-chain technologies. A lot. And thoroughly. And, if we’re being honest, favorably. Crypto Twitter is excited.
Something seemed different from the Jito team
Jito (Jito Labs, Jito Foundation, JitoSOL) is a well-respected stakeholder in the Solana network ecosystem. We talked about Andreessen Horowitz’s crypto arm’s investment in Jito about a month ago.
For those who don’t know, the Solana network is one of the large blockchain networks. As of publishing, the market cap of assets issued on the Solana network was hovering around $150B. In difference to other large blockchain networks like Ethereum and Bitcoin, the Solana network was designed to handle a lot of transactions quickly. Its speed has made it a blockchain network that regularly sees the most decentralized finance (DeFi) activity. That’s also why we write about it quite often on the Meridian Update.
If you talk to people who are in-the-know when it comes to how the Solana network actually works for DeFi, and its flaws in functioning for DeFi, they will probably know about Jito. The Jito team built the software that is synonymous with maximum extractable value (MEV) on the Solana network. The MEV concept touches on the core of how blockchain networks work: validators and block-building.
So Jito is an interesting company to keep an eye on. They built something interesting, notable, and that people in the on-chain world know about. And yesterday, the executive director of the Jito Foundation tweeted something that caught our eye:
“I now recognize that we've neglected the Jito community over the past 6 months. While the team has been locked in, we've failed to communicate the progress and vision
I'll work to change that going forward by being far more vocal. Jito will remain Solana's growth engine”
The executive director also emphasized something he’d pointed out on Twitter before, which is that “Jito is capitalizing with 100% of fees directed towards buybacks” of the JTO token.
It’s not entirely clear what to expect from Jito going forward. But we’ll be keeping an eye on a “far more vocal” Jito team.
That’s a wrap
The shutdown ended, but Crypto Twitter was focused on the Chair of the SEC while a team behind a Solana network infrastructure provider gave some forward guidance. We’ll see you tomorrow morning.
Think we missed something today? Send us a note: email@meridianupdate.com.