The Solana Foundation has moved forcefully against validators engaged in sandwich attacks, a type of blockchain market manipulation. According to Helius cofounder Mert Mumtaz, starting today an unidentified number of validators have been removed from the Foundation’s subsidy pool because of their involvement in these unethical methods.
The Solana network depends much on validators to guarantee its operational integrity and security. Though they can still theoretically operate on the network, those discovered using sandwich assaults will not be financially supported by the SOL Foundation.
Using his social media account @0xMert_ on X (previously Twitter), seasoned ecosystem developer and entrepreneur Mert Mumtaz expanded on the matter.Mumtaz said that particular network changes helped to identify these hostile validators.
Solana MEV Practices Divisive
He underlined that as Solana’s users do not access mempools, MEV (maximum extracted value) practices—which use transaction ordering for profit—are not naturally allowed on SOL. In blockchain systems, MEV has been a divisive topic as validators on Ethereum ( ETH) are known to spend hundreds of millions on gas costs to participate in these activities.
The SOL Foundation’s decision to stop supporting the offenders financially is meant to guard retail consumers from being taken advantage of. “Solana Foundation is not interested in retail users being robbed, especially with their own stake,” Mumtaz said. “People are abusing the system to rob retail and then keep the profits all for themselves.”
It is noteworthy that within its consensus mechanism, the Solana Foundation only controls roughly 16% of the validator pool. This allows leeway for continuous MEV attacks even when their support is withdrawn since the offending validators can keep functioning on their own.
Trading at $158.65 on spot crypto markets, Solana’s native cryptocurrency, SOL, witnessed a little drop of 0.8% in market reaction over the past 24 hours. This small dip captures the reaction of the market to the latest policies as well as continuous worries on network integrity and user protection.
