Background

Why Raiku Exists

Solana delivers unmatched throughput, but enterprises and high-frequency builders still struggle with probabilistic fee markets, MEV volatility, and unpredictable confirmation times. Raiku was born from conversations with validators, infrastructure providers, and teams running latency-critical workloads. The consistent answer was clear: they needed deterministic access to blockspace, predictable cost envelopes, and the ability to express complex execution requirements ahead of time.

The project began in 2024 as an applied research effort. We collaborated with validator partners, economic researchers, and traders to quantify how much value was lost to revert-heavy bursts and spam. Those findings shaped the Slot-Inclusion Quality of Service (siQoS) model, which formalizes bandwidth reservations as a first-class primitive. Every decision in the stack—from auctions to monitoring—stems from the goal of turning blockspace into an accountable, auditable resource.

Evolution of Block Building

Raiku embraces the reality that block building is moving toward specialization. Rather than opposing external builders, we provide them with a structured marketplace and strict guarantees. Validators can opt in without forfeiting sovereignty, while builders gain deterministic slots for novel execution modes such as Ahead-of-Time (AOT) and Just-in-Time (JIT) transactions. This approach keeps Solana’s base layer lean while enabling extensions to handle high-touch logic like MEV protection or custom fee markets.

• Phase 1: deterministic mock auctions, reliability research, and slot telemetry.
• Phase 2: devnet deployment with validator partners to validate siQoS policies.
• Phase 3: public testnet and SDK distribution for builders and liquidity partners.

Principles