Solana HFT/MEV infra thread

On Solana, traders race on two clocks: when they first see a state change, and whether their transaction lands in the next 400-millisecond slot. A recent X thread by trader debar_fx centered on tools built for those two steps: StreamFirst for earlier data and LandFirst for faster submission. (x.com, docs.getblock.io, docs.getblock.io) Solana does not use a traditional public mempool. Transactions are forwarded to a scheduled leader, slots last about 400 milliseconds in practice, and a recent blockhash expires after 150 slots, or roughly one minute. (helius.dev) That design makes raw timing unusually important. Jito says its ShredStream feed can save “hundreds of milliseconds” by delivering shreds — the small fragments of a block — as leaders produce them, before standard remote procedure call, or RPC, distribution catches up. (docs.jito.wtf) GetBlock describes StreamFirst as a way to tap those earlier signals. Its docs say the service combines an accelerated Yellowstone gRPC stack with direct shred-stream delivery, reconstructs state before standard RPC, and advertises 6-millisecond latency within Europe from its Frankfurt setup. (docs.getblock.io) The company’s own March 6, 2026 post said StreamFirst can deliver shreds 10 to 30 milliseconds faster and framed LandFirst as a transaction-landing product with “90%+ N/N+1 landing,” shorthand for inclusion in the current slot or the next one. (getblock.io) Execution is the second half of the race. Jito’s Block Engine lets searchers submit single transactions or bundles over gRPC or JSON-RPC, and those bundles can contain as many as five transactions that execute atomically, meaning all-or-nothing. (docs.jito.wtf) Jito also says its auction runs in 50-millisecond ticks and splits bids into separate auctions when bundles do not touch the same accounts. That parallel routing matters on Solana because unrelated trades can be evaluated at the same time instead of waiting in one global queue. (docs.jito.wtf) LandFirst fits into that execution layer. GetBlock says it routes transactions through multiple delivery paths, including stake-weighted quality of service connections and the Jito auction mechanism, to improve the odds that a time-sensitive trade reaches the leader fast enough to be included. (docs.getblock.io, helius.dev) Stake-weighted quality of service, or SWQoS, changed the network path in early 2024. Helius wrote that leaders reserve about 80% of connection capacity for staked peers and 20% for non-staked nodes, which pushed serious trading firms toward validator relationships and specialized routing instead of generic public RPC endpoints. (helius.dev) That is why Solana’s high-frequency trading and maximal extractable value, or MEV, infrastructure now looks less like a simple API business and more like a proximity business. The edge comes from where your servers sit, which shred feed you ingest, which relays you use, and whether your transactions are shaped for the Jito auction and the next leader. (docs.getblock.io, docs.jito.wtf, getblock.io) Some of the performance claims in the thread, including a 25 to 30 millisecond discovery edge, come from vendor or participant descriptions rather than an independent public benchmark. But the underlying picture is well documented: on Solana, seeing state first and landing first are now separate infrastructure products, and both are being sold in milliseconds. (x.com, docs.getblock.io, docs.getblock.io, docs.jito.wtf)