on Solana there are two ways to send a transaction you either send to i) TPU via an RPC or ii) Jito for i) RPC sends to the txn processing unit (TPU) for the current block leader over QUIC where the % of QUIC connections is higher for higher-staked nodes for ii), this gets complex but essentially, most Jito nodes have a reverse-proxy relayer in front of the TPU, and these relayers hold the txn for a duration there are several micro auctions that happen during this time, and you increase your priority via your ratio of CUs to Jito tips what matters for the RPC path is i) latency to the leader queue, ii) priority, which is determined by how much priority fee you're paying divided by CUs, iii) stake, iv) a bunch of other infra shit we've made a lot of improvements to the TPU sending logic in the past week and are consistently finding good results when compared to other RPCs (1st screenshot shows average latency being lower, and the 2nd screenshot shows much better performance during high congestion events) we have a new product called Sender (lol), that sends to both i) and ii) above, so you don't have to think too hard and can plug in this endpoint you can also choose to send to i) only and not ii) if you don't want a lot of traders have reported positive results, more for some regions than others (especially Tokyo), and we're making improvements every day link below to try it out, you don't even need a helius api key