Solana (SOL) surged past the $200 mark for the first time since March, as network player Jito introduced the Block Assembly Marketplace (BAM), a move that some observers said boosted investor interest in SOL. The token jumped nearly 9% in the past 24 hours, peaking at $203 before slight profit-taking. SOL’s rally was backed by strong flows into derivatives, with the SOL CD20 product posting an 8.87% gain and volume nearly tripling to 4.87 million units, per CoinDesk Analytics. The breakout followed the announcement of BAM, a new high-performance block-building architecture developed by Jito Labs and the Jito Foundation. Scheduled to go live in the coming weeks, BAM introduces a dedicated layer for transaction sequencing, promising faster execution, minimized MEV, and programmable control over blockspace. “Solana surged past an important price level at $200 after the announcement of the Block Assembly Marketplace, which would create a new system for transaction processing,” shared Nick Ruck, director at LVRG Research, in a note to CoinDesk. “Investors were bullish as the development would greatly enhance the efficiency of Solana transactions with more privacy and flexibility across the network.” “Traders believe that Solana has been oversold as developers continue to build on the blockchain despite the downfall of the memecoin market. We're optimistic that Solana can rise higher as an innovative hub with new opportunities for developers and traders,” Ruck added. At a technical level, BAM relies on a network of scheduler nodes using Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) to privately sequence transactions before they reach validators. This means the use of nodes that privately decide the order of transactions before they hit the main Solana network, helping avoid front-running and ensuring fairness. Additionally, BAM introduces a plugin system that allows developers to create custom rules for sorting transactions, whether that involves prioritizing specific types of trades, bundling orders, or charging for access. In short, blockspace becomes programmable, and anyone building on Solana can now earn money by shaping how that space is used. Meanwhile, strength in SOL stems from an increase in institutional interest. Weekly inflows into SOL investment products hit $39 million, with pre-commitments to the proposed REX-Osprey SOL ETF now totaling over $73 million. Data from SoSoValue shows that 2.95 million SOL, worth approximately $531 million, have been accumulated by corporate wallets so far in July. SOL is now up more than 33% in July, outperforming both bitcoin and ether. And technical improvements, such as the rollout of BAM, may continue to boost tailwinds.
