Jito’s BAM Live on Mainnet, But More Block Builders Are Coming

Jito’s Block Assembly Marketplace, or BAM, has launched, implementing an ambitious reimagining of Solana’s block construction process.

Beyond introducing a new high-performance architecture for building blocks, the shift to BAM marks a key transition for Solana. In what can be considered a win for transparency, the network is moving away from Jito’s closed-source block engine to an open-source alternative.

The launch closes a big week for Solana’s infra sector, which also sees a new challenger arise as Raiku announces its $15M seed round.

Validators Onboarding BAM

On September 25, Jito confirmed that BAM has officially launched on the Solana mainnet. Network validators are steadily onboarding Jito’s new infrastructure, which is slated to bring newfound privacy and composability to Solana’s transaction pipeline.

Jito claims BAM’s implementation will enable a greater breadth of applications to be deployed on the Solana mainnet and create new revenue streams for network contributors. 

Through BAM’s new plugin framework, developers can leverage custom ordering logic to enable what Jito has playfully coined “application-controlled-execution”, or ACE. Jito contends that BAM will enable superior application design for a myriad of financial platforms, like CLOBs, perps dexes, and dark pool exchanges.

Jito’s thesis on BAM has been reinforced by other builders across Solana. Speaking with Jito’s Justin Know, Drift co-founder Cindy Leow argues that BAM could help Solana achieve its original North Star of becoming an ‘onchain NASDAQ’.

BAM Estimated to Boost JitoDAO Revenue By $15M

Alongside Solana’s builders and developers, JitoDAO is expected to be one of the biggest benefactors of BAM’s rollout across the network. 

On September 4, $JTO holders voted unanimously in favor of a governance proposal that sought to redirect Jito Labs’ share of block engine fees, and future BAM fees, to the Jito DAO. 

According to Jito’s $JTO economics, JitoDAO has successfully generated over $4.7M in revenue in Q3. BAM’s implementation is expected to accelerate JitoDAO’s earnings further, with Jito co-founder Lucas Bruder estimating BAM plugins and marketplace fees could bring in an additional $15M in annual revenue.

Raiku Raise & BAM Launch Close Big Week for Solana Infra

Jito is, in many ways, the engine room of Solana. Over 97% of network state runs the jito-solana validator client, and its $jitoSOL, commands the majority of LST market share. $jitoSOL is also the only LST to have been included as the underlying asset of a prospective ETF, courtesy VanEck’s recent filing for a jitoSOL ETF.

But despite Jito’s dominance, new players are emerging to challenge the behemoth, at least in terms of its infrastructure stack.

On September 23, Raiku, an upcoming Solana infrastructure provider, announced the successful completion of its Seed funding. 

Aiming to reimagine high-performance block building on the network, Raiku has successfully raised $11.25M in a Seed round led by Pantera Capital, following $2.25M pre-seed led by Figmet Capital and Big Brain Holdings.

While still too early to say whether Raiku will make a meaningful impact on Solana’s block construction landscape, there is no doubt that rising competition across all aspects of Solana will only improve the experience and integrity of the network as a whole. Meanwhile, Anza has also announced a dramatic improvement to its validator client, Agave, promising faster transaction processing and improved reliability.

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