Recently, the Solana Foundation removed multiple validators from its delegation program due to their participation 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 and sandwich attacks. The Solana Foundation recently removed a group of validator node operators from the delegation program for participating in “sandwich attacks,” a rare case in the public chain where nodes are disqualified due to arbitrage-related issues like MEV.
A sandwich attack involves manipulating prices by setting orders before and after a transaction to ensure profits while causing retail investors to get the worst trading prices.
Solana Foundation Removes Over 30 Validators
Tim Garcia, Solana’s Validator Relations Lead, announced on Discord that validators engaging in malicious behavior, such as participating in sandwich attacks with private memory pools or harming Solana users in other ways, will be removed from the delegation program. Garcia emphasized that validators found participating in these attacks violated Solana Foundation rules that prohibit malicious activities. While these validators still retain their validator status, they are no longer eligible to receive rewards for validating transactions on the Solana blockchain.
Validators found conducting sandwich attacks did so by participating in Mempools that allowed such attacks to occur. Mempools are where validators store transactions not yet confirmed by the blockchain, allowing attackers to monitor upcoming transactions to execute sandwich attacks.
According to CoinDesk, a total of over 30 validators were removed from the Solana Foundation delegation program, with many operators being Russian.
Is Solana Foundation’s Action Centralized? Will it Affect Solana Operations?
In response to community concerns about the Foundation’s centralization, Mert Mumtaz, co-founder of Helius, a remote procedure call provider for Solana, explained the issue of node operators seeking profits from retail investors. He stated that sandwich attacks on Solana were originally impossible because clients did not have memory pools, indicating that some participants proactively added private memory pools to their validators to conduct sandwich attacks on Solana and seek profits.
Regarding the centralization concerns raised by the community, Mumtaz responded:
Furthermore, the impact of removing 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 quoted sources stating that the 32 operators the Foundation aims to remove collectively own only 1.5 million SOL, a small percentage of the token delegation program managed by the Foundation, at just 0.5%. Therefore, revoking delegation from these validators will not significantly impact the overall operation of the network.
It must be noted that similar MEV malicious behaviors are default legal on EVM chains like Ethereum, although criticized by some members of the Ethereum community, most consider it a necessary evil in the short term, to be resolved through structures like sharding in the future.
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