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10/06/24
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Solana Removes Validator Operators Involved in Sandwich Attacks
A group of validator operators has reportedly been removed from the Solana Foundation’s delegation program as they were involved in sandwich attacks on traders. A sandwich attack involves a malicious trader searching for a pending transaction on a network, placing an order before it, and then another after.
Such an attack is aimed at manipulating the price of an asset to profit from the difference, with retail investors receiving the worst possible price. They were able to identify the validator operators based on their participation in mempools, which allow sandwich attacks.
Their actions violate Solana Foundation rules which prohibit validators from malicious activity, meaning that no delegation work will be assigned to them anymore. They engaged in malicious activities, including “participating in a private mempool to sandwich attack transactions or otherwise harming Solana users will not be tolerated by the delegation program,” said Solana validator relations lead Tim Garcia via Discord.
“Anyone found engaging in such activity will be rejected from the program, and any stake from the Foundation will be immediately and permanently removed,” said Garcia.
They created the Solana Foundation Delegation Program so that validators will no longer need to hold a remarkable number of tokens by assigning them SOL tokens. Users can assign staking rights to a validator or stake pool through delegation for them to create blocks and verify transactions. Performance is the basis for selecting these validators.
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