Solana Foundation Cuts Off Support for Validators Involved in Sandwich Attacks

Starting today, June 10, 2024, the Solana Foundation has removed an undisclosed number of validators from its pool for participating in sandwich attacks against other on-chain SOL accounts. According to Mert Mumtaz, co-founder of Helius, these violators will no longer receive subsidies from the Solana Foundation. Mumtaz explained on X that the detection of malicious validators was made possible through specific modifications. Solana’s architecture does not allow MEV (maximum extracted value) practices natively since its clients do not access mempools. Removing these validators from the Solana Foundation’s support pool does not mean their termination or additional penalties. Instead, the foundation