The Solana Foundation has recently taken action against a group of validator operators involved in sandwich attacks on traders, resulting in their removal from the delegation program.
A sandwich attack is carried out by a malicious trader who identifies a pending transaction on a network like Ethereum and strategically places orders before and after it. By positioning the transaction between a front-run and a back-run, the attacker manipulates the asset’s price to profit from the price difference, leaving retail investors with the worst possible price.
The identified validators were found to be participating in mempools that allow sandwich attacks, leading to their removal from the program in accordance with the Solana Foundation’s rules against malicious activity. These validators will no longer be assigned any delegation work in the future.
Tim Garcia, a lead in Solana validator relations, made the announcement on Discord and emphasized that operators engaging in malicious activities will not be tolerated. The Solana Foundation’s Delegation Program was designed to assign SOL tokens to validators, relieving them of the need to hold a large number of tokens.
Delegation gives users the option to assign staking rights to a stake pool or validator, who are responsible for creating blocks and verifying transactions based on their performance. The foundation is committed to preventing retail users from being exploited by malicious operators seeking personal gain through fraudulent activities like sandwich attacks.
Mert Mumtaz, co-founder of Solana RPC provider Helius, highlighted the issue of certain operators using third-party meme pools to scam users and profit from retail investors. The foundation delegates SOL to validators to support their operations and aims to protect users from losing their investments due to such exploitative behavior.