BAM is Solana's Coordination Layer

For years, DeFi has been a zero-sum game. Searchers extract value. Validators capture tips. Users lose. The question was always: who gets the value, and how do I get a piece of it?

That's the wrong question.

The right question is: how do we create more value?

BAM exists to answer that question. It is not MEV infrastructure. It's a fundamentally different kind of infrastructure—a coordination layer that aligns incentives between validators, stakers, applications, and traders around a shared goal: making Solana's markets work better for everyone.

"BAM is what traditional capital markets expect. They expect certainty in landing. They expect transaction privacy." - Rebecca Rettig (CLO, Jito Labs)

The Old Game

The old game in crypto is max extraction. Someone profits, someone else pays. Searchers compete to capture arbitrage before anyone else. Applications build defensively, finding how and where they are losing and trying to minimize how much value leaks out of their systems. Validators can arbitrarily deploy custom scheduling logic to extract as much as possible at the expense of users, or they passively allow other market participants to extract for them.

These dynamics don’t just leave money on the table; it actively degrades the quality of the chain. Applications can't build sophisticated financial products when the execution environment underneath them is adversarial. Traders get worse prices. Developers build around problems instead of solving them. Retail loses. And the pie stays the same size while everyone fights over slices.

We know this game well. As the block engine became critical infrastructure for Solana and activity ramped, it inadvertently favored some of these dynamics. But operating at that scale taught us where the real problems (and the real opportunities) live. We need to adapt and innovate the infrastructure. We’ve looked around the corners of alternative solutions, and the way to build Internet Capital Markets that take the best qualities from traditional financial markets and innovate them is to change the game entirely: BAM!

“BAM represents our commitment to building the next generation of execution infrastructure with transparency and neutrality built in from the start. BAM is the only block builder on Solana with cryptographically verifiable transparency: every ordering decision can be proven, not just promised.” - Lucas Bruder (Co-Founder, CEO) 

The New Game

BAM is neutral foundation that provides a private and transparent layer where transactions can be ordered and executed according to observable rules that both applications and validators agree to. Validators that run BAM commit to executing exactly what they receive, and that commitment is verified in real time. These design choices revolve around providing centralized-exchange-like determinism and consistency, without sacrificing privacy, transparency, and decentralization. 

Importantly, BAM enables developers to build their own transaction scheduling logic through plugins. Rather than accepting a one-size-fits-all scheduler, applications can define custom sequencing rules tailored to their specific needs (i.e. dedicated pathways, priority access, specialized ordering) and have those rules enforced by the infrastructure itself. 

To learn more about BAM’s architecture and inspirations, check out the Whiteboard Series.

This is a subtle but critical shift. Instead of validators or their block-builders operating in a black box and unilaterally deciding how to order transactions, BAM creates a private shared execution contract with consistency and transparency baked into every slot. Transactions are private, hidden from adversarial actors. Applications get predictable, transparent, verifiable, and custom scheduling. Validators get more valuable transaction flow. Stakers benefit from the revenue that more efficient markets generate. Traders get better prices. The value stays on Solana.

The pie gets bigger and better, and markets thrive on Solana.

Why This Matters for You

If you're a trader: BAM makes onchain markets structurally better. When applications can build on predictable execution, they can offer tighter spreads, deeper liquidity, and less slippage. You may not interact with BAM directly, but you'll feel the difference in every fill.

If you're a developer: BAM gives you primitives that don't exist anywhere else on Solana. Deterministic execution. Dedicated transaction pathways. Application-controlled ordering via plugins. These aren't optimizations–they're new building blocks. What would you build if you could define your own sequencing rules? Get in touch! We’d love to learn more about accelerating your use case.

If you're a validator: Running BAM means you're accelerating better market structures and value creation on Solana. Plugins create new categories of fee-paying transactions that only exist because BAM makes them possible. Running BAM isn't about maximizing revenue at all costs–it's about balancing incentives between market participants to enable entirely new revenue streams that wouldn't exist otherwise and net to be much larger and more sustainable in the long term than what other “max REV” schedulers capture in the short term.

If you're a staker: You are investing in SOL, not trading it. BAM is designed with the long run value of Solana top-of-mind. Everything that makes BAM valuable to validators flows downstream to you. More plugins. Better markets. More sustainable revenue. When you stake with a BAM validator, you're not just earning yield. You're backing the infrastructure that makes Solana's markets competitive with TradFi and other onchain venues over multiple time horizons.

Building the Foundation

There's a temptation in crypto to optimize for short-term value capture. Ship fast, extract now, figure out sustainability later. BAM takes the opposite approach.

The thesis is that Solana's onchain markets need to compete with TradFi on fundamentals: execution quality, market structure, reliability. This requires investing in the coordination layer. Plugins that improve execution quality strengthen market structure, which attracts more valuable applications and opens the door to more value creation, and that's how Solana wins.

“When applications succeed on Solana, validators succeed. When users receive superior execution quality, more activity flows through the network and more revenue is generated for all stakeholders. BAM exists to ensure that as Solana scales, the execution layer remains transparent, fair, and aligned with the applications and users who drive network growth.” - Lucas Bruder (Co-Founder, CEO)

Get Involved

BAM is live, and the plugin ecosystem is just getting started.

Validators: Run BAM and participate in the next generation of Solana's block-building infrastructure. Learn more.

Developers: If you see execution problems in your domain that would benefit from deterministic ordering, dedicated pathways, or application-controlled execution rules, we want to talk. The plugin framework is being shaped by the teams that will build on it. Reach out.

Stakers: Support BAM validators and back the infrastructure that's making Solana's markets work better. Explore BAM validators.