Recently, the Solana Foundation removed multiple validators from its delegation program due to their involvement in “sandwich attacks.” Over 30 validators were removed, many of whom were Russian operators. Since Solana does not have a native memory pool, these validators actively added private memory pools to engage in profit-seeking behavior through sandwich attacks.
MEV (Maximum Extractable Value) bot attacks are common in DeFi, including frontrunning attacks, sandwich attacks, etc. The Solana Foundation recently removed a group of validator node operators from the delegation program due to their involvement in sandwich attacks, a rare case in the public chain where nodes are disqualified due to arbitrage issues like MEV.
Sandwich attacks refer to attackers manipulating prices by placing orders before and after transactions to ensure they profit while causing retail investors to receive the worst trade prices.
Solana Foundation Removes Over 30 Validators
Tim Garcia, Solana’s Validator Relations Lead, announced on Discord that validators engaged in malicious activities, including participating in sandwich attacks using private memory pools or harming Solana users in other ways, will be removed from the delegation program. Garcia emphasized:
Note: Solana Foundation’s delegation program allows SOL holders to delegate their staking rights to staking pools or validators, reducing the burden on validator nodes to hold a large amount of tokens.
Validators found conducting sandwich attacks were identified for their involvement in Mempools that allowed such attacks to occur. Mempools are where validator nodes store transactions not yet confirmed by the blockchain, enabling attackers to execute sandwich attacks by monitoring upcoming transactions.
These validators violated Solana Foundation’s rules by engaging in these attacks, which prohibit validators from participating in malicious activities. Therefore, while these validators who participated in sandwich attacks still retain their validator status, they are no longer eligible to receive rewards for validating transactions on the Solana blockchain.
According to CoinDesk’s report, a total of over 30 validators were removed from the Solana Foundation’s delegation program, with many operators being Russian.
Is Solana Foundation acting very centralized? Will it affect Solana operations?
In response to this, Mert Mumtaz, co-founder of Helius, a Solana RPC provider, explained in a post on X the issues of node operators seeking profits from retail investors. He stated that sandwich attacks were originally impossible on Solana because the client did not have a memory pool, so some participants proactively added private memory pools to their validators to conduct sandwich attacks on Solana and profit.
Regarding community concerns about the Foundation’s actions being very centralized, Mumtaz responded:
Furthermore, the impact of removing these validators engaged in sandwich attacks on the entire Solana network is limited. This is because the Solana Foundation only delegates tokens to validators with a total stake of less than 16%. Additionally, CoinDesk cited sources indicating that the 32 operators the Solana Foundation aims to remove collectively only hold 1.5 million SOL, a very small proportion of the tokens managed by the Foundation’s delegation program, only 0.5%. Therefore, withdrawing delegation from these validators will not have a significant impact on the overall network operation.
However, it must be said that similar MEV malicious activities are default legal on EVM chains such as Ethereum, although criticized by some members of the Ethereum community, most consider them a necessary evil in the short term and will be resolved through structures like sharding in the future.
Related Reports
EU’s new regulatory proposal views MEV as “market abuse” and requires exchanges to report all suspicious transactions.
Is MEV attack also a crime? US Department of Justice arrests a pair of brothers, accusing them of stealing 25 million pounds worth of cryptocurrency, involving fraud and money laundering.
Solana MEV Guide: Another Dark Forest Beyond Ethereum
