Solana Foundations Takes Action Against Validators Enabling Sandwich Attacks

Sandwich bots have been wreaking havoc on the Solana network for some time. In an effort to eliminate these attacks, the Solana Foundation decided to remove a group of auditors from its authorization program.

The decision was made due to the involvement of these operators in carrying out “sandwich attacks” on Solana users.

The Solana Foundation has the last word

In the organization's official Discord channel, Solana Validator Relations Lead Tim Garcia said these decisions are final, and enforcement actions will continue when they discover operators involved in mempool activities that enable sandwich attacks.

“Anyone found to be involved in such activity will be rejected from the program, and any stake in the organization will be immediately and permanently removed.”

According to Mert Mumtaz, who happens to be the co-founder of Solana RPC provider Helius, the move is to ensure that the organization does not authorize auditors who conduct malicious attacks targeting retail users.

excellent He explained Sandwich attacks are a malicious form of maximum extractable value (MEV) attacks that ensure that retail users always get the worst prices while the attackers extract all the profits. While Solana's design natively prevents such attacks, some actors have modified their validators to enable interference.

He further stated that equity groups are likely to adopt similar policies against sandwich attacks in the future.

“Sandwich attacks”

The organization's decision comes as a welcome respite given the fact that sandwich attacks are one of the most common types of MEV where bots scan the Solana network for users trying to purchase a token. The bots then jump forward in the transaction queue and place a large request for that token before processing the user's request.

Such a tactic drives up the price of the token. Once the user completes a trade at the inflated price, the bots sell their tokens at the new higher price, profiting from the artificial price increase they have triggered at the user's expense.