SOL Strategies Joins Jito’s First Cohort of Third-Party BAM Node Operators

On November 2, 2026, Jito named Triton One, Bitwise and SOL Strategies as the first third-party operators of BAM Nodes, the machines that order transactions for Solana’s Block Assembly Marketplace.

Jito put it plainly: “Until now, every BAM Node on testnet and mainnet has been run by Jito.” This cohort is the first change to that. All three operators have their hardware in place and are working through setup ahead of going live on BAM testnet, according to Jito’s announcement of its first BAM Node operators.

Jito introduced us as a public company “focused on Solana infrastructure and privacy technologies” and one of the network’s early validators. We have run BAM as a validator since its launch. Now we are moving one layer up the stack, into the part that decides transaction order.

What BAM is

BAM is a block-building architecture for Solana, built by Jito Labs and announced by the Jito Foundation in July 2025. It splits block production into two roles.

BAM Nodes receive transactions and decide their order. Each node runs its transaction processing unit and scheduler inside a confidential virtual machine (CVM). The CVM is a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE), isolated by hardware so that even the operator cannot read or modify what runs inside it. Helius covers the details in its technical breakdown of BAM’s architecture.

BAM Validators run an updated Jito-Solana client. They receive the ordered transactions and execute them as instructed, as set out in Jito’s introduction to BAM.

The point is to make ordering verifiable. With the scheduler in sealed hardware, the operator should not be able to see pending orders and reshuffle them for profit. Attestations, covered below, are how that gets proven rather than assumed.

What a BAM Node operator does

Jito’s stated goal is for running a BAM Node to feel like running a Solana validator, backed by clear documentation, SOPs and troubleshooting procedures. This first cohort is the testing ground for that. Under Jito’s BAM Node operator onboarding plan, operators:

• Provision bare-metal hardware
• Deploy the BAM Node inside a CVM using BAM’s tooling
• Track node performance through dedicated telemetry
• Handle day-to-day operations: applying releases, monitoring and incident response
• Feed back what they learn, so Jito can streamline onboarding for future operators

That list is familiar territory. It is the same discipline we apply to our validators: infrastructure as code, primary and backup systems, and engineers on call across time zones. The difference is where the work sits. A validator executes blocks. A BAM Node decides what goes into them, and in what order.

Why third-party operators matter

A transaction-ordering layer run by one company asks users to trust that company. Jito has said as much: in late September 2026 it wrote that trust in BAM still rests on Jito’s own reputation, as noted in Solana Compass’s Jito project review.

Independent operators are the first step away from that. Each new operator adds another set of hardware, another team and another point of failure that does not depend on Jito. Jito says this cohort’s feedback is meant to help it scale BAM to dozens of third-party-operated nodes globally. Its original plan also called for open-source BAM code and community governance.

For Solana, that matters beyond MEV. Ordering is where fairness gets decided for every swap, liquidation and order book fill. If capital markets are going to run onchain, the layer that sequences their trades cannot be a single-operator system.

Our BAM track record

This is the fourth step in a relationship with BAM that goes back to its launch.

Date	Milestone
Nov 2026	Named one of Jito’s first three third-party BAM Node operators, with Triton One and Bitwise
Nov 2025	Hosted an X Space with Jito Labs CEO Lucas Bruder on BAM, ACE and internet capital markets
Oct 2025	Laine validator went live on BAM mainnet
Jul 2025	Named in BAM’s launch validator set alongside Figment, Helius and Triton One.

How Jito has described the rollout

Jito has set out three onboarding phases for the first BAM Node operator cohort:

1. Testnet. Operators deploy their BAM Node inside a CVM, verify it, connect the first testnet validators and learn day-to-day operations. This is the phase the cohort is in now.
2. Early mainnet. Testnet nodes move to mainnet but serve only the operator’s own BAM validators, so connectivity, uptime and performance can be proven before the nodes open up. Jito expects this phase to begin before the end of 2026.
3. Full mainnet. Nodes open to any validator that wants to connect trustlessly, the same as the nodes Jito runs today. This phase is gated on attestations, which give outside validators assurance a node can be trusted, plus the Verifier and Autobahn. The Verifier checks that leaders execute exactly the transactions the node sent, in the order it scheduled them. Autobahn automates banning for ordering violations. Jito is targeting early Q1 2027.

The first cohort is onboarding without any additional economic incentive. Jito has said it will share the process for new operators to join, and the economic model that will sustain node operations, as the cohort moves to mainnet and features like the BAM Registry and attestations go live. All timing above is Jito’s and depends on those features shipping.

FAQ

What is a BAM Node?

A scheduler that receives Solana transactions and sets their order inside a Trusted Execution Environment, before passing them to BAM Validators for execution.

Who are the first third-party BAM Node operators?

Triton One, Bitwise and SOL Strategies, named by Jito on November 2, 2026.

Is SOL Strategies running BAM Nodes on mainnet? 

Not yet. The cohort is onboarding to testnet first. In the early mainnet phase, which Jito expects to begin before the end of 2026, each operator’s nodes will serve only that operator’s own validators.

How is a BAM Node different from a validator? 

A validator executes and votes on blocks. A BAM Node decides which transactions go into a block and in what order. SOL Strategies does both.

Can other validators become BAM Node operators? 

Jito has said it will share the process for new operators to join as the first cohort moves to mainnet. Interested teams can reach Jito on the Jito Developer’s Discord.

 

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