Solana Cracks Down: New Tools to Slash Validators Behind Sandwich Attacks

Solana's validators just got put on notice—the network's rolling out anti-frontrunning tools designed to catch and penalize sandwich attackers. No more sneaky MEV exploits hiding in plain sight.

How it works: The protocol now detects predatory transaction ordering, automatically slashing malicious validators' stakes. Think of it as blockchain justice—served cold.

Wall Street bankers watching this unfold: 'Wait, you can actually punish frontrunners?' Meanwhile in crypto, we're building systems that self-regulate against financial parasites. The irony writes itself.

Solana’s Anatoly Yakovenko praises the move

To further mitigate risks, Marinade introduced Marinade Select, a curated list of trusted validators that other stakers can follow. The move has already gained notable support, including from Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko, particularly in the context of liquid staking.

This is an awesome outcome and was my dream for stake pools.

We need LSTs to be used as collateral in DeFi, and for those DeFi apps to give feedback to the LSTs on what kind of validators are best for DeFi.

If this loop works I have no worries about long term ecosystem… https://t.co/Q2LMDypxuR

Yakovenko emphasized that liquid staking protocols like Marinade, Jito, and Lido should provide feedback on validator performance. This feedback loop, he argued, can help insulate the broader ecosystem from bad actors.

Solana Foundation has been actively trying to overhaul its validator ecosystem for a while. In April, the Foundation announced that it WOULD start cutting small validators from its delegation program. Namely, the organization gives some of its SOL tokens to validators to boost their earnings.

Still, challenges for Solana’s validator ecosystem remain. Due to high fixed costs associated with running a node, many validators struggle to break even. This is why some of them resort to operations such as sandwich attacks.