Why Solana keeps getting faster — and what's next (ft. Jito Labs CEO Lucas Bruder)

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Apr 3, 2026

Lucas Bruder, CEO of Jito — a leader in Solana liquid staking and validator tooling. He explains why Solana’s fees are tiny, how Jito acts like Cloudflare for the network by filtering spam and improving ordering, and why the team doubled down on Solana during the bear market. They also discuss making finance accessible on a phone and Solana’s rapid technical improvements.

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INSIGHT

Jito Acts Like Cloudflare For Solana

Solana's cheap, high-throughput design creates heavy transaction spam that needs network-level mitigation.
Jito built a validator client and tooling that act like Cloudflare to filter spam and optimize transaction ordering for Solana.

INSIGHT

Solana's Single State Machine Drives Speed

Solana prioritizes a single synchronized state machine and low-level engineering choices to achieve extreme speed and low fees.
Lucas was drawn by Solana's architecture and the team's deep systems expertise, not just surface-level features.

ANECDOTE

From Robotics To Moving Money

Lucas transitioned from robotics and embedded systems to MEV trading then to Solana after being 'nerd sniped' by its systems design.
He found parallels between moving physical machinery and moving money, which motivated the career shift.

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What if opening a trading account was as easy as downloading an app?

Lucas Bruder, CEO of Jito — a Solana-based liquid staking protocol — breaks down why he thinks all of finance is moving onchain, and what his small team is doing to make that happen.

During the 2022-2023 bear market, Jito was getting pitched constantly to jump ship to other chains. Lucas explains why they turned everything down, doubled down on Solana, and chewed a lot of glass.

We also cover how Jito acts like a Cloudflare for Solana, why cheap transactions create surprising problems, what convinced Lucas that the Solana engineers were in it for the right reasons, and his vision for a financial system anyone can access with just a phone.

Follow Jito: https://www.jito.network/

Follow Lucas: https://x.com/buffalu__

Highlights

0:00 — Intro
0:49 — What is Jito and why does it exist
1:11 — Why Solana transactions are less than a penny
2:00 — What attracted Lucas to Solana from Ethereum
2:39 — How Jito is like Cloudflare for blockchains
5:02 — The $1,500 Ethereum transaction fee problem
7:21 — The vision: all of finance onchain
7:46 — Onchain vs. opening a Robinhood account
8:37 — Lucas's journey from robotics to crypto
9:55 — Solana's rate of improvement and Anatoly's Law
10:44 — The pitch for people new to crypto
15:00 — Staying lean at 21 people
15:17 — Nicotine as a productivity hack
15:58 — Sleep, alcohol, and the Oura ring
16:40 — Smallest hill you'll die on: littering and shopping carts

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