Solana MEV Bots Explained: Jito Bundles vs Flashbots on Ethereum

By Merunas Grincalaitis, founder of MEV DAO and a developer who builds MEV, sniping and trading bots on Ethereum. Last updated: Oct 29, 2026.

TL;DR: Solana has MEV, but it works differently from Ethereum because Solana has no built-in public mempool. Most MEV competition runs through Jito: searchers send bundles of up to 5 transactions that execute in order and all-or-nothing, and they pay validators a tip on top of normal priority fees. Jito shut down its own mempool in March 2024 after a wave of sandwich attacks, but sandwiching moved to private mempools run by some validators. If you're coming from Ethereum, think of Jito bundles as the closest thing to Flashbots bundles, with a very different network underneath.

Most of my work is on Ethereum, and people regularly ask me whether the same bots work on Solana. Some of the ideas carry over. Almost none of the code does. This is the mental map I wish I'd had when I first looked at Solana MEV.

Does Solana have MEV?

Yes. MEV, maximal extractable value, is the profit available from choosing the order of transactions in a block, and every chain where someone orders transactions has it. On Solana the usual forms are the same as on Ethereum: arbitrage between pools, liquidations, and sandwich attacks on swaps.

What changes is how searchers get access to that ordering. On Ethereum, pending transactions sit in a public mempool, and builders assemble blocks through MEV-Boost. On Solana, as Helius explains in its introduction to Solana MEV, there is no native in-protocol mempool. The leader schedule is known ahead of time, and transactions are sent toward the validators that will produce the next blocks.

That one difference shapes everything else. With no public waiting room, there's no default place to watch pending trades. Someone has to build that place, and whoever controls it has a lot of power.

How do Jito bundles work?

Jito Labs maintains Jito-Solana, a validator client built on the standard Solana client that adds bundle processing and MEV payments. Validators running it receive bundles from Jito's block engine.

According to Jito's documentation, a bundle is:

• A group of up to 5 transactions.
• Executed sequentially and atomically. If one fails, the whole bundle is dropped.
• Paid for with a tip. The tip is a SOL transfer to one of Jito's tip accounts, separate from Solana's in-protocol priority fee. Jito enforces a minimum tip of 1,000 lamports for bundles, and says that minimum often won't be enough when demand is high.

The block engine simulates incoming bundles, picks the most profitable combination, and forwards winners to the validator. Helius describes this as an out-of-protocol auction for partial blocks, which is different from MEV-Boost, where builders compete with full blocks.

Many people use Jito without doing MEV at all. Bots and apps send transactions through Jito simply because the inclusion guarantee is useful when the network is busy. A Telegram trading bot that promises fast landing on Solana is often doing exactly that.

Why did Jito shut down its mempool?

For a while, Jito also ran a pseudo-mempool. Transactions waited in it briefly, and searchers could bid to place bundles around them. Helius notes that Jito-Solana was run by about 65% of validators when it wrote its introduction, so this effectively became the canonical mempool for the network.

It also made sandwiching cheap. Solana fees are low, and meme coin traders often set wide slippage, so even small trades were worth attacking. On March 8, 2024, Jito announced it would suspend the mempool. CoinDesk reported that Jito had tried to engineer ways to reject sandwich bundles, but in the words of contributor Lucas Bruder, "our solutions became a cat-and-mouse game with MEV searchers."

Do sandwich attacks still happen on Solana?

Yes. Shutting down the public mempool didn't remove the incentive; it moved the activity to private channels.

Helius's Solana MEV report found that the shutdown "encouraged the rise of alternative mempools that lack transparency and primarily benefit a select group with exclusive access." It attributes much of the sandwiching to a private mempool operated by a single entity, DeezNode, and cites Jito's internal analysis that nearly half of all sandwich attacks on Solana could be traced to one program. Over the 30 days the report measured, that program executed 1.55 million sandwich transactions for 65,880 SOL in profit.

The ecosystem has pushed back. Jito's governance forum has JIP-15, a proposal to blacklist validators engaged in malicious MEV from the Jito stake pool, following an earlier blacklist under JIP-4. The proposal says an investigation found roughly 14% of Jito Stake Pool validators participating in private mempools at the time, and mentions that the Solana Foundation Delegation Program had taken blacklisting action too.

If you want the general mechanics of the attack, my sandwich attack guide is written for Ethereum, but the math is identical.

How do you protect yourself from MEV on Solana?

A few tools exist, and they work at different layers.

Jito DontFront. You add any valid public key that starts with jitodontfront as a read-only account in one of your instructions and send through Jito's block engine. The Solana docs explain the rule: any bundle containing your transaction must put it at index 0, so nobody can place a trade in front of you inside a Jito bundle. Jito's own disclaimer says it "is not guaranteed" to stop all sandwiches, because it only covers the block engine and not other software.

Protected routing. Helius offers MEV Protect, which avoids sending your transaction to validators that are statistically linked to sandwich activity.

Aggregator settings. Jupiter says its Ultra mode includes MEV protection through private submission, while its Manual mode does not. Jupiter also states that this "significantly reduces the risk but does not eliminate it."

Tight slippage. This is still the single most effective defense, and the Solana docs say so directly. A sandwich can only take what your slippage setting allows.

Jito vs Flashbots: what's actually different?

	Ethereum (Flashbots)	Solana (Jito)
Public mempool	Yes, built into the protocol	No native mempool
Bundle method	eth_sendBundle to builders	sendBundle to Jito's block engine
What wins	Builders compete with full blocks via MEV-Boost	Bundles compete for partial blocks
Bundle size	Any number of transactions	Up to 5 transactions
How you pay	Priority fee or direct payment to the builder	Tip to a Jito tip account, plus priority fees
User refunds	MEV-Share and similar auctions	No equivalent standard
Block time	12-second slots	Much shorter slots (around 400 ms targeted)

The biggest practical difference for bot builders is time. On Ethereum, a Flashbots bundle targets a 12-second block, and you can simulate it carefully first. On Solana, everything is compressed into much shorter slots, so latency and where your server sits matter far more.

The second difference is user refunds. On Ethereum, users can get paid back through MEV-Share. Solana has no widely used equivalent that I know of, so most of the value goes to searchers and validators.

How do you create a MEV bot on Solana?

If you've built an Ethereum bot, here's how the pieces map over:

1. Language. Solana programs are usually written in Rust, and most serious searchers write their off-chain bots in Rust too. If you already use Rust for Ethereum, as I describe in my Rust MEV bot stack, the language carries over, but the libraries don't.
2. Data. With no public mempool, you mostly react to state changes rather than pending transactions. That means streaming account updates as fast as possible from a node or a data provider.
3. Strategy. Atomic arbitrage between AMMs is the most common starting point. Helius's report counted over 90 million successful arbitrage transactions in a year, with an average profit of $1.58. In other words, it's a high-volume, low-margin game.
4. Landing. You send through Jito with a tip, or through a fast transaction sender, and accept that many attempts will fail.
5. Testing. Simulate every transaction and bundle before sending. Jito says its RPC supports simulateBundle for this.

What I'd avoid is building a sandwich bot. Beyond the harm to users, the ecosystem is actively blacklisting validators that enable it, and you'd be relying on access to private order flow you don't control.

Frequently asked questions

Is there MEV on Solana?

Yes. Arbitrage, liquidations, and sandwich attacks all happen on Solana. The difference from Ethereum is that there is no native public mempool, so most competition runs through Jito bundles and private channels.

What is a Jito bundle?

A Jito bundle is a group of up to five Solana transactions that execute in order and all-or-nothing. Searchers submit bundles to Jito's block engine with a tip, and winning bundles are passed to validators running the Jito-Solana client.

How much should a Jito tip be?

Jito enforces a minimum of 1,000 lamports, but it says that often isn't enough during busy periods. In practice, the right tip depends on competition for the same opportunity, so bots usually set tips dynamically.

What is MEV protection on Solana?

It's any method that stops other parties from reordering your transaction for profit. Common options include Jito's DontFront account, routing that avoids validators linked to sandwiching, private submission through aggregators like Jupiter Ultra, and tight slippage.

Does Jupiter have MEV protection?

Jupiter says its Ultra mode includes built-in MEV protection through private transaction submission and that Manual mode does not. It also says the protection reduces the risk but doesn't remove it entirely.

Can I use Flashbots on Solana?

No. Flashbots tools such as Protect, MEV-Share, and eth_sendBundle are built for Ethereum. On Solana, the closest equivalent is sending bundles through Jito's block engine.

Related guides

• What is MEV protection on Ethereum, and should you use it?
• What is a sandwich attack and how to avoid getting sandwiched
• How to create a MEV bot: from mempool to first bundle
• Is MEV bot arbitrage still profitable in 2026?

I spend most of my time on Ethereum because that's where I think the tooling and the user protections are most mature, but it's worth knowing how the other big chain does it. If you're weighing a custom bot for either chain, you can read about custom MEV bot development at MEV DAO, or subscribe for more guides like this one.