Solana-based Marinade Finance has unveiled new tools to combat validators that take advantage of traders.
Bad actors among Solana validators have long posed a challenge, but native protocols are stepping up efforts to address the issue. On Tuesday, June 24, Marinade Finance rolled out a suite of tools designed to detect and block validators engaging in sandwich attacks against users.
Sandwich attacks occur when validators strategically place a transaction both before and after a user’s trade. Because validators can control transaction sequencing, they exploit this advantage to extract profit — at the trader’s expense.
Marinade identified such behavior in SOL delegated through its Stake Auction Marketplace. In response, the team developed more effective blacklisting mechanisms and added slashing tools that penalize malicious validators by cutting their rewards.
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.
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.
