The Solana Foundation has taken a decisive action to suppress “validator sandwich attacks” by removing a group of operators from its delegation program. These underhand tactics involve a bad actor spotting a pending network transaction then placing their own before and after the intended one, manipulating the asset price to score a profit difference while ensuring the everyday trader is met the worst possible price.
These rogue operators were unveiled via their involvement in “mempools”, which are known to facilitate these sorts of attacks. Solana Foundation’s policy strictly forbids such harmful actions. Consequently, these identified validators will no longer receive any delegation responsibilities.
Making the announcement on Discord, Solana validator relations lead Tim Garcia informed that participants harbouring malicious intentions, like utilising a private mempool to launch sandwich attacks or cause harm to Solana users, will not be endured in the delegation program. He further warned that any such offenders caught in the act will face immediate and absolute removal of any stakes from the Foundation.
The Delegation Program of the Solana Foundation was brought to existence to ease validators of the obligation to hold a significant bulk of tokens, by allocating them Solana’s SOL tokens. Delegation essentially allows users to delegate staking responsibilities to a validator or a stake pool, with validators entrusted with creating blocks and verifying transactions.
This move underscores Solana Foundation’s commitment to protecting everyday traders from potential exploitation and discouraging any form of system abuse. Their primary concern is to shield its users from significant financial losses due to fraudulent trading activities.