The Solana Foundation announced the exclusion of a group of node operators from the delegation program due to their participation in "sandwich attacks" against users. This was announced by Tim Garcia, head of the department for relations with blockchain validators, in the Discord channel.
I'm sure a lot of super honest people who have a perfect understanding of MEV on Solana and the Foundation Delegation program will try to misrepresent reality to feel better about their bags
For those genuinely curious, I'll summarize:
- a sandwich attack is a malicious form of… pic.twitter.com/KhfGBgGuyT
"The decisions on this issue are final. We will continue to take enforcement measures against operators involved in memes that allow "sandwich attacks"," Garcia wrote.
Back on May 7, a representative of the organization warned that such activities contradict the rules of the ecosystem:
"The delegation program does not allow operators engaged in malicious activities, such as participating in a private mempool for "sandwich attacks" or otherwise harming Solana users. Anyone found guilty of such activities will be excluded from the program, and the share of the Solana Foundation will be immediately and irrevocably canceled."
This step ensures that the fund will not delegate authority to validators who carry out malicious actions against retail users, said Mert Mumtaz, CEO of RPC provider Helius Labs.
He explained that a "sandwich attack" is a malicious form of MEV bots that extracts all profits from certain trades, leaving ordinary traders with assets at the worst prices.
According to Mumtaz, initially such operations could not be carried out in Solana, since there was no mempool in the blockchain client. However, some validators have added "modifications".
"The Solana Foundation delegates SOL to validators in order to help them get started. Since people abuse the system to rob retail traders and keep all the profits for themselves, the network fund is not interested in this, especially using their own funds," said CEO Helius Labs.
Mumtaz also stressed that the excluded validators will be able to continue to participate in the management of the blockchain, but only without funding from the Solana Foundation.
Previously, the operator of the MEV bot jaredfromsubway.eth spent more than 215 ETH (~$830,200) on commissions and became the largest consumer of gas in Ethereum.
Recall that the co-founder of the network, Vitalik Buterin, attributed MEV to the three main threats to network decentralization, along with liquid staking and the cost of launching a full node.
The EU regulator called the technology a prime example of market abuse.