How to Push Solana Transactions Through Congestion

🚀 How to Push Solana Transactions Through Congestion — A Practical Guide for TypeScript HFT Builders

Why your HFT bot keeps getting stuck in Solana traffic — and how AllenHark Relay fixes it.

High-frequency trading on Solana is a completely different game from building a normal arbitrage or liquidation bot. When the network is hot, leaders rotate every few slots, transaction queues balloon, and your beautifully crafted arbitrage opportunity dies in the mempool before it gets a chance to land.

If you're a TypeScript engineer trying to get signed transactions to the leader quickly and without drops, this guide breaks down the architecture, best practices, and endpoint configuration patterns used by professional HFT teams — including where AllenHark Relay fits when the network is congested.

1. The Real Bottleneck: Network Propagation, Not Signing

Most Solana HFT setups optimize the wrong step.

Your best signing architecture won't matter if:

• Your RPC is a public shared node
• Your packets hit the public TPU fanout
• You aren't injected directly into leader nodes
• You rely solely on sendTransaction instead of QUIC sends
• You have no tip prioritization pipeline

Propagation delay kills more trades than signing latency.

AllenHark Relay shortens propagation by carrying your signed transaction over private connections straight to the current leader, skipping public gossip.

2. The TypeScript Architecture Used by Most Successful HFT Bots

Below is the recommended production pattern:

(a) Pre-sign your transactions

Never sign on-demand:

const ix = createYourIx();
const message = new TransactionMessage({
  payerKey: wallet.publicKey,
  recentBlockhash,
  instructions: [ix]
}).compileToV0Message();

const rawTx = new VersionedTransaction(message);
rawTx.sign([wallet]);
const serialized = rawTx.serialize();

Then pipe this directly to your relay.

(b) Use a dedicated QUIC sender

Public RPC → WebSockets → sendTransaction() = slow, unpredictable, packet drop hell.

What you want instead:

• A QUIC client that writes raw UDP datagrams
• Persistent keep-alive channels (no TLS renegotiation)
• Direct leader feed entry

AllenHark Relay exposes:

• QUIC: relay.allenhark.com:4433 (Frankfurt alias for 88.216.36.108:4433; also ams, ny, tyo)
• HTTPS: https://relay.allenhark.com
• API key: required on every request — x-api-key header or ?api-key=; over QUIC it's the first line of the stream

Trade bots interact through a thin TypeScript client or raw QUIC packets:

// Example using HTTPS for simplicity (QUIC recommended for persistent connections)
await fetch("https://relay.allenhark.com/v1/sendTx", {
  method: "POST",
  headers: { "x-api-key": process.env.ALLENHARK_API_KEY! },
  body: JSON.stringify({
    jsonrpc: "2.0",
    method: "sendTransaction",
    params: [
      base58SignedTx,
      { skipPreflight: true }
    ]
  })
});

(c) Keep multiple connections warm

Real HFT setups run:

• 1 QUIC channel for sends
• 1 backup QUIC channel
• 1 HTTP client (axios/keep-alive)
• 1 websocket stream for slots/leader

Your goal is zero cold starts.

const agent = new http.Agent({ keepAlive: true });
const api = axios.create({
  baseURL: "https://relay.allenhark.com",
  httpAgent: agent,
  timeout: 300
});

3. RPC Config for Low-Latency Sends

Use these settings everywhere:

getLatestBlockhash({
  commitment: "processed"
});

Why?

• "processed" gives you the newest blockhash
• "confirmed" is a little behind it
• "finalized" is well behind the tip, too old for HFT

Also:

// When using standard RPC methods
sendRawTransaction(serialized, {
  skipPreflight: true,
  maxRetries: 0
});

Preflight is a killer — drop it for anything HFT.

4. The Role of Tips: Your Fast Lane into Leader Blocks

During congestion, Solana prioritizes tipped transactions.

Most bot builders send:

• too low tips (1–5k lamports)
• inconsistent tips
• no adaptive curve

You pay AllenHark Relay per transaction: each one carries a tip of at least 0.001 SOL (1,000,000 lamports), transferred to one of the relay's tip wallets in the same transaction. Create your API key in the console. Relay Dedicated is the optional monthly upgrade for volume: a higher rate limit, and no tip from your whitelisted wallets.

Example Tip Wallets:

• hark1zxc5Rz3K8Kquz79WPWFEgNCFeJnsMJ16f22uNP
• harkm2BTWxZuszoNpZnfe84jRbQTg6KGHaQBmWzDGQQ
• ... (see docs for full list)

5. Why a Private Relay Beats Public RPC Every Time

Public RPC nodes: ❌ Shared bandwidth ❌ Unpredictable queueing ❌ Packet drops during hot moments ❌ No direct leader peering ❌ No mempool bypass

AllenHark Relay: ✅ Private connections straight to the current leader ✅ Never touches public gossip ✅ QUIC, WebSocket and HTTPS endpoints ✅ Jito bundles: up to five transactions, atomic and in order ✅ Pay per transaction, with a tip inside it ✅ Relay Dedicated for volume: a higher rate limit, no tip from whitelisted wallets

Professional traders use private relays because network position is a competitive advantage.

6. Full Recommended Setup for Delivery Under Congestion

Backend stack (TypeScript):

• @solana/web3.js or helius-labs/solana for signing
• Axios with keep-alive for control-plane requests
• QUIC client for data-plane raw sends
• AllenHark Relay endpoint for leader delivery
• Adaptive tip algorithm
• Parallel hot connections
• Pre-signed transactions

What to measure:

• Time from signal to send, on your own box
• Slots between the slot you aimed for and the slot you landed in
• Drops and Blockhash not found errors
• How all three behave during a congestion spike

7. Final Advice: Co-Locate with the Relay

If you're running:

• market-making bots
• arbitrage
• liquidation engines
• MEV searchers
• Jito bundles
• pump detection engines

Running next to the relay removes the leg between your bot and the relay, the largest term you still control.

We offer VPS and bare-metal servers in Frankfurt, where AllenHark Relay runs.

If your PnL depends on landing in the next 1–3 slots, co-location is the single biggest performance upgrade.

CTA: Ready to Build a Fast Bot? Connect to AllenHark Relay

If you want:

• ⚡ Private delivery straight to the current leader
• ⚡ QUIC, WebSocket and HTTPS endpoints
• ⚡ Jito bundles, atomic and in order
• ⚡ Pay per transaction, with a tip inside it
• ⚡ Relay Dedicated when your volume grows

Then AllenHark Relay is engineered for you.

👉 Contact us to co-locate with our relay nodes

👉 Read the Relay integration guide

👉 Create your Relay API key