Proprietary or Dark Automated Market Makers on Solana

Proprietary, “Prop” or “Dark” Automated Market Markets (AMMs) such as SolFi, Humidifi and Tessera V on Solana are absorbing a meaningful share of Solana volume. Prop AMM’s value proposition is simple: lower slippage and better prices for users, and less adverse flow for market makers. Less adverse flow means AMMs quote tighter spreads for liquidity pairs, in turn giving Solana users better prices and deeper liquidity for their trades. All together, this draws more trading volume and onchain.

Higher trading volumes through tighter spreads and deeper liquidity translates to real usage and demand for blockspace on Solana. This means greater total MEV tips and priority fees within blocks. Figment’s Solana delegators earn more Solana Staking Rewards as trading volumes increase onchain. On Solana, Prop AMM pricing and slippage rivals traditional centralized exchange order books, with slippage as low as 0-0.5bps!

Prop AMM Flywheel

What is a Dark or “Proprietary” AMM on Solana

“Proprietary” AMMs (often called Prop AMMs or Dark AMMs) are smart contracts, private liquidity pools, order routers and programs operated by professional market makers. Smart contract pricing logic and liquidity pair inventory management are not exposed on a public curve like Uniswap v2, Orca or Raydium pairs. Instead the pools integrate directly with aggregators for order flow. They are designed to avoid stale prices picked off by high frequency, latency driven trading strategies (adverse or toxic flow). In avoiding adverse flow, Prop AMMs can quote tighter and deeper price depth for Solana users. Currently, the onchain trading pair with volumes in the billions, lowest slippage and greatest depth is SOL/USDC.

Cofounder of Drift Protocol, @crispheaney highlighted Prop AMMs ability to enable Just-In-Time Liquidity, where trading inventory for a pair (ex SOL/USDC) is sourced in the transaction directly before a user’s trader pair, meaning execution prices are as close to a fair market price at that moment in time as possible. Prop AMMs are a Solana and market microstructure innovation.

A highlight of Prop AMMs trading logic is an oracle call update many times per second, and per block. Oracle updates are much less compute intensive and therefore less expensive than swaps. @bqbrady found that Prop AMMs push to their internal pool pricing functions many times a second just before the user’s transaction executes. This constantly refreshes stale prices, gives users better execution through tighter spreads, and is highly competitive with Centralized Exchange spreads at 0-0.5bps spreads!

Prop AMM Cumulative PnL by DEX, SOL/USDC
Credit: @bqbrady

Why are Prop AMMs winning order flow

1. Better execution for market takers or natural flow traders. Private programs internalize pricing, continuously update oracle pricing and minimize order router sandwichable paths. This reduces slippage for traders relative to public AMM curves. Execution quality (better prices for users) is driving the shift. 
2. Less adverse selection or toxic flow for makers. By limiting information leakage, market makers quote tighter spreads and at larger size/depth.  Benedict Brady mentioned this dynamic for Prop AMMs in a recent Blockspace Media interview on Solana’s dark pool routing. (Blockspace Media)
3. Aggregator and front end order flow distribution. Jupiter Exchanges order router concentrates DEX routing on Solana. Once a Prop AMM earns Jupiter’s router’s best price execution slot for relevant high volume pairs such as SOL/USDC , they capture a large share of flow. The Defiant report shows a material share of Jupiter and total DEX volume flowing to private AMMs. 

How big is the shift

1. ~40% of Jupiter volume routed through Prop AMMs, per The Defiant 
2. ~30% of total Solana DEX volume in a recent week from Prop AMMs, per DLNews
3. Delphi Digital research claims even higher shares by venue for SolFi, ZeroFi, and Tessera V

Reported Prop AMM share of Solana volumes in 2025

What this means for Figment’s Solana delegators and validator economics

1. Higher Staking Rewards: Lower slippage increases onchain fill rates, increasing demand for Solana blockspace through transaction fees. When takers see tighter realized prices, more trades route onchain rather than offchain or to CEXs. This raises Solana’s total executed volume and fees per block over time. 
2. Higher MEV Rewards: Upward pressure on MEV tips and priority fee as demand for blockspace is more competitive. Higher quality order flow can induce more aggressive priority fee bidding and MEV tips in busy periods, increasing Solana delegator reward rates.
3. Durability of flow: Prop AMMs rely on professional market makers who compete on execution, not on token incentives. This makes volume stickier through cycles, which benefits delegators seeking sustained, real economic activity.

Ties to broader Solana market microstructure improvements

Prop AMMs and JIT liquidity are new Solana market microstructures such as Dark AMMs and JIT liquidity. These innovations reduce price slippage and MEV drag for Solana onchain users, giving better price executions and keeping Solana’s user trading experience fast. As the execution layer matures, institutional takers get highly competitive prices centralized exchanges venues when transacting onchain.

@bqbrady’s interview with Blockspace Media makes it clear: Prop AMMs order routing price execution coexists and often outcompete public AMMs and centralized exchange order books. Prop AMMs private quotes are able to give better execution for institutional trading size while aggregators arbitrate best prices across venues.

Practical takeaways for Solana institutional delegators

1. Execution quality drives durable usage. If dark AMMs keep slippage low and fills reliable, they can pull steady flow onchain. More reliable flow supports validator fee capture, delegator rewards and ecosystem health.
2. Assess validator strategy. Prefer operators who run high reliability, low latency infrastructure and who engage with priority fee markets and MEV aware relays where applicable
3. Ask for metrics. Figment quarterly validator report. When evaluating your validator, request fee and tip contribution breakdowns over time.

Stake SOL with Figment

Figment provides the complete staking solution for over 1000+ institutional clients, including asset managers, exchanges, wallets, foundations, custodians, and large token holders, to earn rewards on their digital assets. 

On Solana, Figment is one of the largest non-custodial staking providers of staked SOL. Institutional staking services from Figment include seamless point-and-click staking, portfolio reward tracking, API integrations, audited infrastructure, and slashing protection. This is just one part of Figment’s mission to support the adoption, growth, and long-term success of the digital asset ecosystem. 

When it comes to Staking Solana, Figment offers: 

• More Rewards: Figment supports JitoMEV relay.
• Click-to-Stake: Experience the best staking interface for SOL with access to the Figment app. View your staking positions in real-time as well as stake, unstake, and view rewards. Track your portfolio across multiple networks and download detailed reports.
• Optimized Rewards Reporting: Access detailed and comprehensive rewards statements in various formats.