As a result of their involvement in sandwich attacks against traders, the Solana Foundation has excluded a group of validator operators from its delegation program.
In an attack known as a Sandwich, a malicious trader examines the network of their choice, such as Ethereum, for a pending transaction. Sandwiching is submitting one order before the transaction and another immediately following it.
The assailant will manipulate the asset’s price and profit from the discrepancy by positioning the first pending transaction between a front-run and a back-run, both coinciding.
This attack ensures that retail investors consistently obtain the lowest possible price while the attacker retains all the profit.
Their participation in mem pools, which permit sandwich assaults, enabled the identification of the validator operators. The decision was made following the Solana Foundation’s regulations, which forbid validators from engaging in evil activities. Delegation tasks will not be assigned to the guilty validators in the future.
Tim Garcia, the lead of Solana’s validator relations, announced the removal of validators on Discord. He also stated that the delegation program will not tolerate operators who engage in malicious activities, such as “participating in a private mempool to sandwich attack transactions or otherwise harming Solana users.”
“Anyone found engaging in such activity will be rejected from the program, and any stake from the Foundation will be immediately and permanently removed,” Gracia added.
Solana Delegation Program
The Solana Foundation Delegation Program was created to alleviate the burden of validators possessing a substantial number of tokens by assigning them Solana tokens.
Delegation enables users to allocate staking rights to a stake pool or validator. In turn, validators are responsible for the creation of blocks and the verification of transactions. The selection of these validators is contingent upon their ability to perform.
Consequently, it is unacceptable for validators to defraud retail consumers using third-party meme pools. On X, Mert Mumtaz, the co-founder of Helius, a Solana RPC provider, elucidated the challenges associated with operators who seek to capitalize on retail consumers. He stated that specific operators have modified their validators to facilitate sandwiching on Solana.
Also, Mumtaz stated that the Solana Foundation assigns SOL to validators to facilitate their initial stages. The Solana Foundation declared its dedication to safeguarding retail users from exploiting the system for personal benefit by those who abuse it. They primarily aim to prevent users from losing their investments due to these fraudulent activities.
