BAM: Jito's Revolutionary Upgrade Set to Transform Transaction Processing on Solana

The Solana ecosystem stands on the precipice of its most significant transaction processing upgrade in history. In a revealing conversation on the Lightspeed podcast, Jito co-founder Lucas Bruder detailed the company's ambitious new initiative called BAM—a comprehensive overhaul of how transactions are sequenced, processed, and verified across the Solana network. This upgrade represents not just a technical evolution but a philosophical shift toward transparency, decentralization, and value creation for applications and users alike.

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The announcement comes at a pivotal moment for Solana, which has experienced remarkable growth but also faced challenges around network congestion and transaction processing efficiency. Jito, which has become central to how users get their transactions landed on the network, is now pivoting toward a more open and transparent architecture that could reshape the competitive landscape of blockchain infrastructure.

The Evolution of Jito and the Road to BAM

Jito's journey to BAM began with a stark realization at the end of 2024. The company had built a comprehensive tech stack for handling MEV (Maximal Extractable Value) and transaction processing on Solana, but found itself constantly responding to emergencies rather than building for the future. As Bruder explained, the team was "just fighting fires 24/7 because people were abusing it."

This reactive posture prompted a deeper examination of where Solana would be in three to four years. The projections were eye-opening. Current architecture, Bruder acknowledged, simply "wasn't going to scale to 2K, 5K, 10K TPS." Solana's ambitions far exceeded what the existing infrastructure could support, necessitating a fundamental rethinking of how transactions flow through the network.

The decision to build BAM wasn't made in isolation. The team conducted extensive research into what other blockchain ecosystems were doing, notably studying Flashbots and their BuilderNet initiative on Ethereum. These conversations helped shape the direction that would eventually become BAM, incorporating lessons learned from across the industry while remaining optimized for Solana's unique architecture.

Perhaps most importantly, Jito wanted to shift its focus from simply managing MEV to actively creating value for applications and users. This represented a significant philosophical evolution for a company that had built its reputation on MEV infrastructure. The goal now was to leverage their engineering expertise and deep relationships with Solana applications to build something that users would genuinely find valuable.

Understanding Why Transaction Ordering Matters

At first glance, transaction ordering might seem like a minor technical detail. After all, as long as your transaction makes it to the blockchain, you get to execute the trade you intended. However, the reality is far more nuanced and consequential than this surface-level understanding suggests.

Within any given block, the order in which transactions are included creates and destroys enormous value for different stakeholders. Whether your trade gets executed at the beginning or the end of a block can mean the difference between a profitable transaction and a losing one. This is particularly true in the fast-moving world of Solana, where memecoins like fart coin trade hands at dizzying speeds.

"It kind of sounds like a minor thing of changing the way that transactions are sequenced, but it's actually very important for who wins and who loses in the Solana trading game."

The stakes become even clearer when considering malicious practices like sandwich attacks. In these scenarios, bad actors exploit their ability to see pending transactions and insert their own transactions before and after a victim's trade, extracting value at the user's expense. The current opacity of transaction sequencing makes these attacks both possible and difficult to detect.

Transaction ordering also has profound implications for applications building on Solana. DeFi protocols, NFT marketplaces, and trading platforms all depend on fair and predictable transaction processing. When that process is opaque or manipulable, it undermines trust in the entire ecosystem and discourages both users and developers from fully engaging with the platform.

What is BAM and How Does It Work?

BAM represents a fundamental reimagining of how transactions are sequenced on Solana. At its core, BAM introduces a new scheduling system that operates within Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs), providing unprecedented transparency and verifiability to the transaction ordering process.

The technical architecture works as follows: Solana currently has a main scheduler that sequences transactions, with various implementations including the one developed by Firedancer and others that validators have written themselves. BAM replaces or augments this with a scheduler that runs entirely inside TEEs—encrypted sections of processors where the contents of operations remain hidden from outside observation.

TEEs provide a crucial property called attestation. This allows anyone to verify that a specific image hash is running, which can be matched against the public BAM repository. Users and validators can therefore confirm exactly what code is being executed, eliminating the need to trust that operators are running what they claim to be running.

Once transactions are sequenced within the TEE, they are forwarded to the validator for execution in FIFO (First In, First Out) order. This straightforward execution model, combined with the verifiable sequencing, creates a system where the rules of the game are known and enforceable by anyone who wants to check.

The Role of Trusted Execution Environments

Trusted Execution Environments form the technological foundation of BAM's security and transparency guarantees. Understanding what TEEs are and why they matter is essential for grasping the significance of this upgrade.

TEEs are specialized, encrypted portions of a processor that isolate sensitive computations from the rest of the system. Even the system's administrator or the hardware owner cannot read the contents of what's happening inside a TEE. This creates a secure enclave where sensitive operations can be performed with confidence that they haven't been tampered with.

For BAM, TEEs serve multiple critical functions. First, they ensure that the sequencing logic cannot be manipulated by validators or other parties with access to the hardware. Second, they provide the attestation capability that allows external observers to verify what code is running. Third, they protect transaction data during the sequencing process, enhancing privacy.

The combination of encryption and attestation addresses one of the fundamental challenges in decentralized systems: how do you verify that remote computers are running the software they claim to be running? With TEEs, this verification becomes cryptographically possible, enabling a level of transparency that wasn't previously achievable in transaction sequencing systems.

Open Source and Transparency

One of the most significant departures BAM represents from Jito's current architecture is its commitment to being fully open source. The existing block engine is closed source, which has been a persistent point of criticism and concern within the Solana community.

"The block engine is all closed source and we just wanted to build something that was transparent."

By open sourcing BAM, Jito invites the entire ecosystem to inspect, verify, and even modify the code. This transparency serves multiple purposes. It builds trust by allowing anyone to understand exactly how transactions are being processed. It enables security researchers to identify potential vulnerabilities before they can be exploited. And it allows other developers to suggest improvements or build upon the foundation that Jito has created.

The transparency extends beyond just the code itself. With TEE attestation, users can verify that the published code is actually what's running in production. This closes the gap between "trust us, we're running this code" and "here's cryptographic proof of what's running." For a system that handles billions of dollars in transaction value, this distinction matters enormously.

Furthermore, transparent operations make it much easier to identify when something goes wrong or when bad actors attempt to game the system. Attribution—figuring out where in the transaction processing pipeline a problem occurred—is currently extremely difficult. BAM's transparency promises to make such attribution straightforward.

Addressing Sandwich Attacks and MEV Extraction

The Solana ecosystem has grappled with various forms of MEV extraction, with sandwich attacks being among the most visible and damaging. BAM directly addresses these concerns through its architecture and transparency features.

Sandwich attacks occur when a bad actor identifies a pending transaction, places their own transaction immediately before it, and another immediately after. The attacker profits from the price movement their victim's transaction causes, while the victim gets a worse execution price than they would have otherwise received.

"There's just a lot of games being played that are very hard to figure out what they are and where things are happening. The goal here is to try to one, prevent those games, but two, if they're happening, it will be pretty obvious and you'll be able to shine a light on it."

Bruder referenced sandwich.me from the Ghost Logs team as an example of tools that have emerged to track these attacks, but acknowledged that the games being played are often difficult to detect and attribute. BAM's transparent sequencing aims to make such attacks either impossible or immediately visible.

The prevention mechanism works on multiple levels. First, the deterministic FIFO execution means that transactions can't be arbitrarily reordered to create sandwich opportunities. Second, the TEE's privacy protections mean that pending transactions aren't visible to potential attackers in the way they might be in other systems. Third, if attacks do occur, the transparent audit trail makes it possible to identify exactly how they happened and who was responsible.

The Plugin Architecture

BAM introduces a plugin system that has generated significant interest and questions from the community. This architecture represents a forward-looking approach that anticipates future needs and innovations.

While Bruder didn't go into extensive detail about the plugins in this conversation, acknowledging that "a lot of people have questions on" this feature, the plugin architecture suggests a modular approach to transaction processing. Rather than building a monolithic system that tries to address every possible use case, BAM appears designed to be extensible.

This extensibility could enable applications to customize how their transactions are processed without requiring changes to the core protocol. It could allow validators to experiment with different sequencing strategies. It could facilitate the integration of new features as they're developed without requiring complete system overhauls.

The plugin system also aligns with Jito's stated goal of focusing on value creation for applications. By providing hooks for customization, BAM could enable entirely new categories of applications that leverage the transaction processing infrastructure in novel ways.

Scalability and Future-Proofing

A driving motivation behind BAM's development was the realization that current infrastructure wouldn't scale to meet Solana's ambitious throughput goals. The network aspires to achieve transaction processing rates that would make current architectures obsolete.

By separating the sequencing logic into an upgradeable, open-source component, BAM creates a path for continuous improvement without requiring validators to adopt entirely new clients. As more efficient sequencing algorithms are developed or as hardware improvements enable faster processing, these improvements can be integrated into BAM without disrupting the broader network.

The move toward 2K, 5K, and eventually 10K TPS requires not just faster individual operations but fundamentally more efficient system design. BAM's architecture, with its clean separation of concerns between sequencing and execution, creates opportunities for parallelization and optimization that wouldn't be possible in a more tightly coupled system.

Future-proofing also means anticipating regulatory and compliance requirements that may emerge as blockchain technology becomes more mainstream. BAM's transparency and auditability features position it well for an environment where financial regulators may require greater visibility into transaction processing systems.

The Validator Upgrade Path

For validators currently running the Jito Solana client, the transition to BAM will require an upgrade to the new BAM Jito Solana client. This upgrade represents the practical implementation of all the architectural changes BAM introduces.

The vast majority of Solana's stake currently runs on the Jito Solana client, which means the adoption of BAM will likely follow existing distribution patterns. However, the voluntary nature of validator software choices means that adoption will depend on validators seeing clear benefits from the upgrade.

The timeline for this upgrade, according to Bruder, is "in the coming weeks or months." This suggests active development and testing are well underway, with a production release anticipated in the near term. The gradual rollout approach allows for testing at scale before full network adoption.

Validators considering the upgrade will need to evaluate the operational changes involved in running BAM. The TEE requirements, in particular, may necessitate hardware upgrades or configuration changes for some operators. However, the benefits of transparent, verifiable transaction processing should outweigh these transitional costs for most validators.

Decentralization Goals

Jito has explicitly positioned BAM as an effort to decentralize what they do. This commitment to decentralization represents a maturation of the project from its early days focused primarily on MEV extraction and distribution.

The centralization concerns around current MEV infrastructure are well-documented across blockchain ecosystems. When a small number of entities control the flow of transactions, they wield significant power that can be abused or can become single points of failure. Decentralizing this infrastructure spreads the risk and reduces the attack surface.

BAM's approach to decentralization is practical rather than ideological. The open-source code allows anyone to run sequencing infrastructure. The TEE attestation ensures that multiple operators can participate while maintaining system integrity. The plugin architecture enables innovation without permission from a central authority.

True decentralization in transaction processing is technically challenging because some coordination is required to prevent chaos. BAM attempts to square this circle by providing a framework within which decentralized operation is possible while maintaining the consistency and reliability that users expect.

The Competitive Landscape

Jito's dominance in Solana's MEV infrastructure has been both a benefit and a concern for the ecosystem. BAM represents an evolution that may reshape the competitive dynamics of this critical infrastructure layer.

By open-sourcing the sequencing logic, Jito is essentially inviting competition. Other teams could fork BAM and create their own variants optimized for different use cases or philosophies. This competition could drive innovation and prevent any single entity from exercising undue control over transaction processing.

However, Jito's head start, technical expertise, and existing relationships with validators give them significant advantages even in an open-source world. The company has invested years in understanding the nuances of Solana's transaction processing and has built relationships throughout the ecosystem that won't be easily replicated.

The reference to Flashbots and their BuilderNet initiative is notable. Flashbots has faced similar questions about centralization and competition in the Ethereum ecosystem. Jito's awareness of these dynamics and their proactive steps toward transparency and decentralization suggest they've learned from observing how these issues have played out on other chains.

Impact on DeFi Applications

DeFi applications stand to benefit significantly from BAM's implementation. The predictability, transparency, and fairness guarantees that BAM provides address long-standing concerns that have limited DeFi adoption and development on Solana.

Trading applications, in particular, depend on fair execution. When users submit trades, they want confidence that they're getting the best possible price without being exploited by hidden actors in the transaction processing pipeline. BAM's transparent sequencing provides exactly this confidence.

Lending protocols and other DeFi primitives benefit from predictable transaction ordering when processing liquidations and other time-sensitive operations. The current uncertainty about when and how transactions will be processed creates risks that BAM's deterministic approach mitigates.

The plugin architecture could enable DeFi applications to implement custom processing logic for their specific needs. For example, a DEX might implement fair ordering guarantees that go beyond what the base protocol provides, or a lending protocol might implement priority processing for liquidations to ensure system stability.

Privacy Considerations

Privacy in transaction processing involves a delicate balance. Users want their pending transactions protected from front-running, but they also want transparency about how the system operates. BAM attempts to provide both through its TEE-based architecture.

The TEE enclave protects transaction data during sequencing, preventing actors with access to the processing infrastructure from seeing and exploiting pending transactions before they're finalized. This is a significant privacy improvement over systems where transaction data is visible to network participants before execution.

At the same time, the transparency about what code is running and how it operates doesn't compromise individual transaction privacy. Users can verify system behavior without exposing their own financial activity to scrutiny.

This approach to privacy—protecting user data while making system operations transparent—aligns with best practices in system design and may become increasingly important as regulatory frameworks around blockchain privacy evolve.

The Role of User and Application Feedback

Jito's pivot toward focusing on "value creation for applications" reflects a user-centric development philosophy that has characterized successful infrastructure projects across the technology industry.

"We've been talking to a lot of users and applications and like, what can we actually build that users and applications on Solana want."

This approach—identifying needs through direct engagement rather than building in isolation—increases the likelihood that BAM will address real problems rather than theoretical concerns. The features and priorities that emerge from these conversations represent validated demand rather than guesswork.

The feedback loop between infrastructure providers and applications using that infrastructure creates a virtuous cycle. Applications articulate their needs, infrastructure improves to meet those needs, and applications can then build more sophisticated features that generate new infrastructure requirements. BAM's development appears to be deeply embedded in this cycle.

Technical Challenges and Considerations

Implementing BAM involves overcoming significant technical challenges. Running critical financial infrastructure inside TEEs at scale is not trivial, and the performance implications must be carefully managed.

TEEs add overhead to processing, and for a high-throughput system like Solana, every microsecond matters. The engineering work required to make TEE-based sequencing performant enough for production use is substantial. Jito's years of experience optimizing Solana infrastructure positions them well for this challenge, but it remains non-trivial.

Hardware availability is another consideration. TEE capabilities vary across processor generations and manufacturers. Ensuring that validators can access the required hardware at reasonable cost affects the accessibility of running BAM infrastructure.

The attestation and verification systems must be robust against various attack vectors. While TEEs provide strong guarantees, they're not perfect, and implementation details matter enormously for security. The open-source nature of BAM allows for community security review, but also exposes implementation details to potential attackers.

Ecosystem-Wide Implications

BAM's implementation will have ripple effects throughout the Solana ecosystem that extend far beyond transaction processing. The increased transparency and fairness could accelerate adoption of Solana for use cases that require high integrity transaction processing.

Institutional adoption, in particular, often depends on the ability to audit and verify system behavior. BAM's transparency features make such audits possible in ways that weren't previously practical. Financial institutions evaluating Solana for serious applications will find BAM's verifiability compelling.

The developer experience also improves when transaction processing is predictable and well-documented. Building applications on a foundation where behavior is clearly specified and verifiable is much easier than building on opaque infrastructure with undocumented edge cases.

The broader narrative around Solana benefits from projects like BAM that demonstrate the ecosystem's capacity for self-improvement and responsiveness to community concerns. This maturation signals that Solana is serious about addressing the challenges that come with growth and adoption.

Timeline and Rollout Expectations

According to Bruder, the BAM Jito Solana client upgrade will be available "in the coming weeks or months." This timeline suggests that development is well advanced and the project is approaching production readiness.

The rollout will likely be gradual, with early adopters providing feedback and helping identify issues before broader deployment. This phased approach reduces risk and allows for course corrections if problems emerge.

Validator adoption will be voluntary but is likely to be widespread given Jito's existing market position. The benefits of transparent, verifiable transaction processing should provide strong incentives for validators to upgrade, especially as users begin demanding these features.

The transition period may involve operating both old and new systems in parallel, ensuring continuity of service while the new architecture is validated. Managing this transition smoothly is critical for maintaining user trust and network stability.

Looking Beyond BAM

While BAM represents a significant milestone, it's clearly positioned as part of Jito's longer-term vision rather than an endpoint. The emphasis on building for multi-year time horizons suggests that BAM is foundational infrastructure for future developments.

The plugin architecture, in particular, hints at future extensibility that could enable entirely new categories of functionality. As the ecosystem's needs evolve, BAM appears designed to evolve with them.

The open-source approach also enables community-driven innovation. Features that Jito hasn't anticipated could emerge from the broader developer community, building on the BAM foundation in unexpected ways. This potential for permissionless innovation is one of the most exciting aspects of the open-source commitment.

Jito's acknowledgment that they want to "try to get people to modify it" suggests an expectation that BAM will be forked, extended, and improved by others. This collaborative approach to infrastructure development has historically produced some of the most robust and widely adopted systems in technology.

The Significance for Solana's Future

BAM arrives at a critical juncture for Solana. The network has demonstrated its technical capabilities and attracted significant adoption, but questions about infrastructure centralization and transaction fairness have persisted. BAM directly addresses these concerns.

The commitment to transparency and decentralization strengthens Solana's value proposition as a platform for serious applications. Enterprise users, financial institutions, and developers building critical applications need confidence in the infrastructure they build upon. BAM provides reasons for that confidence.

Solana's competitive position relative to other high-performance blockchains improves with BAM. The network can point to BAM as evidence of its commitment to solving hard problems in principled ways rather than through expedient compromises.

The timing, with Solana continuing to grow and attract attention, means that BAM will be implemented in front of a large and engaged audience. Success here could cement Solana's position as a leading blockchain platform for the next generation of decentralized applications.

Conclusion

BAM represents the largest transaction processing upgrade in Solana's history, addressing fundamental questions about transparency, fairness, and decentralization that have accompanied the network's rapid growth. By moving transaction sequencing into trusted execution environments and open-sourcing the entire stack, Jito is taking a principled stand for verifiability and openness.

The implications extend far beyond the technical details. BAM demonstrates that the Solana ecosystem can evolve to address concerns raised by its community while maintaining the performance characteristics that make the network unique. It shows that MEV infrastructure can be developed in ways that create value for users rather than primarily extracting it.

For validators, the upgrade path to BAM will require adaptation but promises significant benefits in terms of transparency and auditability. For applications, BAM provides a more predictable and fair foundation upon which to build. For users, BAM offers protection against various forms of exploitation that have characterized early blockchain ecosystems.

As Bruder and the Jito team work toward releasing the BAM Jito Solana client in the coming weeks and months, the Solana ecosystem watches with anticipation. The success of this upgrade could define the trajectory of Solana for years to come, establishing new standards for how blockchain infrastructure should operate in a mature, responsible ecosystem.

Facts + Figures

• Jito's current market position: The vast majority of Solana stake currently runs on the Jito Solana client, making this upgrade impactful for essentially the entire network

• Scaling targets: Current architecture was recognized as insufficient for 2K, 5K, or 10K TPS that Solana aspires to achieve

• Timeline: BAM Jito Solana client upgrade expected "in the coming weeks or months"

• Open source commitment: BAM will be fully open source, contrasting with the current closed-source block engine

• TEE implementation: Transaction sequencing will occur inside Trusted Execution Environments, providing encryption and attestation capabilities

• FIFO execution: Transactions processed by BAM will be executed in First In, First Out order by validators

• Research influences: Jito studied Flashbots and their BuilderNet initiative when developing BAM

• Plugin architecture: BAM introduces a plugin system allowing for customization and extensibility

• Attribution challenges: Current systems make it "extremely difficult" to figure out where sandwich attacks and other games are happening

• Philosophical shift: Jito explicitly pivoting from MEV focus to "value creation for applications"

• Verification capability: Users will be able to match image hashes against the BAM repo to verify what code is running

• Multi-year planning: Development motivated by looking at "multi-year time horizon" for Solana's evolution

• Community tools: References sandwich.me from Ghost Logs team as existing tool for tracking MEV exploitation

Questions Answered

What is BAM and why is Jito building it?

BAM is Jito's comprehensive upgrade to transaction processing on Solana that introduces transparent, verifiable transaction sequencing using Trusted Execution Environments. Jito is building BAM because their current closed-source block engine architecture won't scale to the 2K, 5K, or 10K TPS that Solana aims to achieve in the coming years. The project also addresses long-standing concerns about transparency and decentralization in MEV infrastructure, with Jito explicitly wanting to open source their systems and allow community modification and verification.

How does BAM prevent sandwich attacks?

BAM prevents sandwich attacks through multiple mechanisms built into its architecture. The sequencing logic runs inside Trusted Execution Environments, which are encrypted processor sections where pending transactions aren't visible to potential attackers. The deterministic FIFO execution order means transactions can't be arbitrarily reordered to create sandwich opportunities. Additionally, the full transparency of the system means that if attacks do somehow occur, they will be immediately visible and attributable, creating strong deterrents against such behavior.

What are Trusted Execution Environments and why do they matter for BAM?

Trusted Execution Environments are specialized, encrypted portions of processors that isolate sensitive computations from the rest of the system. For BAM, TEEs serve three critical functions: they ensure sequencing logic can't be manipulated by validators or hardware operators, they provide attestation capabilities allowing external verification of running code, and they protect transaction data during processing for enhanced privacy. The attestation feature is particularly important because it allows anyone to verify that the code they see in the open-source repository is actually what's running in production.

When will BAM be available and how will validators upgrade?

According to Lucas Bruder, the BAM Jito Solana client will be available "in the coming weeks or months," suggesting active development is nearing completion. Validators currently running the Jito Solana client will need to upgrade to the new BAM-enabled version. Given that the vast majority of Solana stake runs on Jito, adoption is expected to be widespread, though validators will need to evaluate any hardware requirements for TEE support and operational changes involved in the transition.

What does BAM mean for transparency on Solana?

BAM represents a major leap forward for transparency in Solana's transaction processing. The current block engine is entirely closed source, making it impossible for users to verify how their transactions are being handled. BAM will be fully open source with TEE attestation, meaning anyone can inspect the code and cryptographically verify that production systems are running that exact code. This addresses attribution challenges that currently make it "extremely difficult" to understand where problems occur in transaction processing.

How does BAM's plugin architecture work?

While full details weren't disclosed, BAM introduces a plugin system designed for customization and extensibility. This modular approach allows applications to potentially customize how their transactions are processed without requiring core protocol changes. The plugin architecture aligns with Jito's stated goal of focusing on value creation for applications, as it enables innovation without requiring permission from a central authority and allows the system to evolve as ecosystem needs change.

Why is transaction ordering so important on Solana?

Transaction ordering within blocks creates and destroys enormous value for different stakeholders. The position of a trade at the beginning versus the end of a block can mean the difference between profit and loss. This matters especially for high-frequency trading of assets like memecoins where prices move rapidly. Beyond individual trades, applications building DeFi protocols, NFT marketplaces, and trading platforms all depend on fair and predictable transaction processing. When that process is opaque or manipulable, it undermines trust in the entire ecosystem.

How does BAM compare to Flashbots' BuilderNet?

Jito studied Flashbots and their BuilderNet initiative when developing BAM, incorporating lessons learned from the Ethereum ecosystem. Both projects address concerns about centralization and transparency in MEV infrastructure. By open sourcing BAM, Jito is taking a similar philosophical approach to Flashbots while optimizing for Solana's unique architecture and performance requirements. The awareness of how these issues have played out on Ethereum informed Jito's proactive steps toward transparency and decentralization.

What happens to the current Jito block engine when BAM launches?

BAM represents an evolution of Jito's infrastructure rather than an immediate replacement. The transition will likely involve a gradual rollout with early adopters providing feedback before broader deployment. The current closed-source block engine architecture will be superseded by the open-source, TEE-based BAM system. Validators will need to upgrade to the BAM Jito Solana client, but the voluntary nature of this upgrade means both systems may operate in parallel during the transition period to ensure continuity of service.