Solana’s Code Improvements Cut Sandwich Attack Profits 10%

Anza’s lead economist, Max Resnick, recently discussed the issue of sandwich attacks on the Solana blockchain during an appearance on the Lightspeed newsletter. Sandwich attacks occur when malicious actors both frontrun and backrun a trade to profit at the expense of the trader, exploiting Solana’s speed to execute these timing games.

Historically, sandwich attacks have been a significant concern for Solana and its developers. In early 2024, infrastructure provider Jito shut down its mempool due to sandwiching concerns. Later, the Solana Foundation removed suspected sandwichers from its stake delegation program, and Jito’s DAO voted to blacklist malicious validators from its stake pool. However, these measures did not completely resolve the issue, and sandwich attacks continued.

Resnick’s perspective is that the reduction in sandwich attacks is not solely due to blacklisting bad actors, but rather to improvements in Solana’s code. Sandwich attacks are essentially numbers games for attackers, and the difficulty of landing transactions on Solana has decreased. This improvement means that fewer validators see each transaction, reducing the opportunities for sandwichers to interfere with transactions.

According to Resnick, the current situation is that a 10% stake involved in sandwiching can only see 10% of the transactions, which is the intended outcome. This aligns with data from sandwich attack tracker Ghost, which shows that Solana sandwichers profited less in March and April of this year compared to the same months last year, despite the chain’s REV remaining roughly the same during both periods.

Ghost’s report also identified Marinade, a Solana stake pool provider, as the primary staking source for sandwichers. In response, Marinade has begun penalizing sandwich attackers using its stake auction marketplace. This proactive measure by Marinade further supports the overall effort to mitigate sandwich attacks on the Solana blockchain.