Solana sandwich attacks ‘way down’: Anza’s Max Resnick

Data shows frontrunning has declined on the network compared to last year

article-image

wanderlustun and r4films/Shutterstock and Adobe modified by Blockworks

share

This is a segment from the Lightspeed newsletter. To read full editions, subscribe.


When Anza’s lead economist Max Resnick came on Lightspeed recently, I asked him a question that frequently gets brought up in conversations about Solana’s economics: What should be done about the sandwich attack problem?

His answer surprised me. “The sandwiching rate [is] way down,” Resnick said. 

Solana’s speed makes it an ideal venue for timing games at the expense of unsophisticated users. A sandwich attack happens when a toxic market participant both frontruns and backruns a trade to profit at the expense of the trader.

Sandwiching has historically been a big concern for Solana and its developers. In early 2024, Solana infrastructure shop Jito shut down its mempool over sandwiching concerns. A couple months later, the Solana Foundation cut suspected sandwichers from its stake delegation program. Jito’s DAO also voted to blacklist malicious validators from its stake pool. 

None of these fixes turned out to be panaceas, however, and the sandwich attacks continued

But the story Resnick tells is that sandwich attacking was blunted not by blacklisting bad actors — who may be able to re-emerge with a different online identity — but by improving Solana’s code.

Basically, sandwich attacks are numbers games for the attackers.

In 2024, when landing transactions on Solana was much more difficult, transactions were sprayed widely to validators in hopes of getting user transactions to the blockchain. This meant toxic validators saw a lot of transactions and had more chances to frontrun them. As Solana’s transaction “targeting” has improved, fewer validators see each transaction on average, so sandwichers have fewer opportunities to mess with transactions, Resnick said.

Now, “a 10% stake that’s sandwiching is able to see only 10% of the transactions, which is what it should be,” Resnick added.

The data seems to bear this point out as well. A report from sandwich attack tracker Ghost shows Solana sandwichers profited less in March and April of this year than in the same months last year — despite the fact that the chain’s REV was roughly the same during both periods.

Ghost’s report also said Solana stake pool provider Marinade had become the primary staking source for sandwichers. In response, Marinade has begun penalizing sandwich attackers using its stake auction marketplace.


Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

Tags

Upcoming Events

Old Billingsgate

Mon - Wed, October 13 - 15, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

recent research

Research

article-image

The crypto platform’s stock opened at $90, which was about 143% above its IPO price

article-image

Offchain Labs’ acquisition of ZeroDev marks a shift toward full-stack developer tooling

article-image

Under the suggested criteria, non-custodial apps would not have to pursue broker registration

article-image

Peter Thiel’s $5 billion Roth IRA walked so token IRAs could run

article-image

Institutions launching their own L1s isn’t good for Solana — but it’s just as bad for everyone else

article-image

USDC issuer plans layer-1 blockchain launch in bid to “underpin all stablecoin finance”