Private Trading on Solana With Jito: Avoid Sandwiches

What a sandwich attack is

A sandwich happens when someone sees your pending swap before it lands, buys ahead of it to push the price up, lets your trade execute at the worse price, and then sells right after. Your trade still goes through, but you pay more on a buy or receive less on a sell.

The precondition is visibility: the attacker has to see the transaction while it is still pending. A transaction sent through the regular RPC path can be seen before it lands.

How Jito bundles keep a trade private

A Jito bundle is sent to Jito's block engine instead of the regular RPC path. A one-transaction bundle either lands with its tip or does not land at all.

Every Terminal buy and sell on Solana is sent this way - as a one-transaction Jito bundle that includes a 0.0001 SOL tip. It is never sent through the regular RPC path, where it could be seen and sandwiched before landing.

This is the same protection whether the token is still on the pump.fun bonding curve or has graduated to its PumpSwap pool. Graduated tokens trade with the same Jito protection, the same 1% platform fee and the same 5% slippage as tokens on the curve.

Retries, blockhashes and the 30-second window

Solana transactions reference a recent blockhash and expire if they are not included in time. The Terminal signs each trade once and re-sends the same transaction until it lands or its blockhash expires, so a trade can never land twice.

A bundle that does not land costs nothing - the tip and the trade only execute if the bundle is included. The 1% platform fee sits inside the same transaction, so it is also only paid when the trade lands.

Regular RPC send versus the Terminal

Trading many wallets one after another

When several wallets buy or sell, the Terminal trades them in parallel, four at a time, each with its own quote and slippage limit (10% by default, adjustable), so a bulk sell finishes in seconds.

This applies on the pump.fun bonding curve and, for graduated tokens, on the PumpSwap pool. Slippage is set to 5% on both.

Sequential trading matters most for sells. Selling a large position from many wallets at once means each sell moves the price for the next one. Re-quoting each wallet against the state the previous trade left keeps every sell's expected output realistic, and each one still goes out as its own private Jito bundle.

What a wallet needs before it can buy

Because the tip and fee are part of the transaction, a wallet must hold enough SOL for all of it. Before buying, each wallet that cannot cover the buy plus 1%, the 0.0001 SOL Jito tip and about 0.003 SOL for fees and token-account rent shows Not enough SOL, and its Buy button is disabled.

After a trade lands, the amounts used for PNL are read from the confirmed transaction - the real SOL and token change - so the tip and every fee are already included.

FAQ

• Are Terminal trades on Solana sent through the public RPC? No. Every buy and sell is sent as a one-transaction Jito bundle, never through the regular RPC path.
• How much does the Jito tip cost per trade? Each Terminal buy or sell includes a 0.0001 SOL tip.
• What happens if a trade bundle does not land? It is re-sent with a fresh blockhash until it lands or 30 seconds pass, and a bundle that does not land costs nothing.
• Is the 1% platform fee charged on failed trades? No. The fee is inside the same transaction, so it is only paid when the trade lands.
• Why do wallets trade one after another? So each wallet can be re-quoted against the curve or pool the previous trade left.

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