An important step came from the Solana Foundation regarding Solana DEXs, whose use has increased significantly recently. The foundation excluded validators involved in some attacks from the SOL token reward program. These validators were verifying transactions for the security of the network and earning SOL tokens in return.

Tim Garcia, the manager in charge of validator communication at the foundation, stated that the sandwich attacks violated the rules announced on May 7 and said, “The decisions taken cannot be changed. We have found that some operators are participating in mempools that allow sandwich attacks.”

What is a sandwich attack?

In the cryptocurrency world, especially in decentralized exchanges, sandwich attacks, a type of “front-running” manipulation, are known as games played on prices.

Taking the Solana network as an example, when a DEX user wants to buy a meme token with SOL, the attacker enters the scene in a short time.

The user will pay 10 SOL tokens for the meme coin (sample price), but the attacker will do it right before the user. Therefore, the user gets a more expensive token. After the user’s order is executed, the attacker has the opportunity to sell the token at a more expensive price and executes the sale. Therefore, the attacker sells the token at an expensive price. The user, on the other hand, does not buy at the price they wanted to buy, but at a more expensive price.