The Solana validators reportedly conducted sandwich attacks on retail users with the goal to manipulate the SOL price and profit from the arbitrage.
In the latest development, the Solana Foundation announced its decision to remove a group of validator operators from its delegation program. These validators face accusations of their involvement in sandwich attacks on the Solana users.
Tim Garcia, the Solana Validator Relations Lead said:
“Decisions in this matter are final. Enforcement actions are ongoing as we detect operators participating in mempools which allow sandwich attacks.”
This move clearly highlights that the Foundation won’t entertain validators conducting malicious attacks on retail users. As per Garcia, the sandwich attacks are basically against the rules laid down by the Solana Foundation.
A sandwich attack is a form of front-running exploit wherein an attacker strategically positions two transactions around a victim’s transaction. This tactic aims to manipulate the price, allowing the attacker to profit from the price difference. In a post on Discord, Garcia noted:
“Operators engaging in malicious activities such as participating in a private mempool to sandwich attack transactions or otherwise harming Solana users will not be tolerated by the delegation program. Anyone found engaging in such activity will be rejected from the program and any stake from the Foundation will be immediately and permanently removed.”
Garcia explicitly mentioned this when announcing the removal of the operators. The Solana Foundation Delegation Program aims to assist validators in their operations by delegating SOL tokens to them, eliminating the requirement to possess a significant number of tokens. It also chooses validators based on their performance.
Solana Prepares for Mainnet Upgrade
The Solana Foundation is preparing for another mainnet upgrade requesting validators to upgrade to a new stable release. This upgrade aims to reduce network congestion and pressure driven by a massive frenzy for the Solana-based meme coins.
Solana’s team has officially recommended the adoption of the v1.18.15 release for the upcoming mainnet upgrade, according to a post by Solana Status on June 10. This upgrade aims to address significant congestion issues on the network caused by the recent launch of Solana-based meme coins. The Solana team has urged mainnet beta validators to transition to the v1.18.15 release.
The upgrade also introduces several key changes, including an update of the Bump version to v1.18.15, deemed stable for deployment on Mainnet Beta. Moreover, notable additions outlined in the GitHub release include the incorporation of certificate authority (CA) certificates into the Docker image, bug fixes to ensure valid transactions are properly queued, and the implementation of metrics for threshold failures.
Friends it’s time to go 100% v1.18.15 on @solana mainnet-beta. Please update when <5% delinquent stake.
v1.8 has landed bros. pic.twitter.com/Sou5A5pOO3
— Rex St. John (@rexstjohn) June 10, 2024
Additionally, the upgrade will optimize the scheduler by integrating worker precompile verification and adjusting shallow threshold checks to log only during the consensus mechanism.
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