🥪 MEV Monitor: Solana Sandwich Attacks
Table of ContentsIntroductiontl;drThe Financial Impact: Quantifying the Drain & Costs 3.1 Overall Scale of Value Extraction 3.2 Attacker Economics: Costs vs. Profitability 3.3 User Costs: Direct Losses and Transaction Fees 3.4 Temporal Impact Trends 3.5 Summary of Financial ImplicationsWho & How: The Attacker Landscape & Strategies 4.1 The Dual Challenge: Attribution & Ecosystem Complexity 4.2 Attacker Economics as a Behavioral Proxy 4.3 Diverse Execution Methods & Infrastructure Insights 4.4...
🥪 MEV Monitor: Solana Sandwich Attacks
Table of ContentsIntroductiontl;drThe Financial Impact: Quantifying the Drain & Costs 3.1 Overall Scale of Value Extraction 3.2 Attacker Economics: Costs vs. Profitability 3.3 User Costs: Direct Losses and Transaction Fees 3.4 Temporal Impact Trends 3.5 Summary of Financial ImplicationsWho & How: The Attacker Landscape & Strategies 4.1 The Dual Challenge: Attribution & Ecosystem Complexity 4.2 Attacker Economics as a Behavioral Proxy 4.3 Diverse Execution Methods & Infrastructure Insights 4.4...
The Next Evolution of Digital Assets on Solana and the Death of the Old Gods
Over the last few years the world has slowly turned its bull market love for NFTs into bear market hate, yet the sprawling ecosystem that took roots on Solana has pushed on, and by now, over 300 million individual tokens in 180 thousand collections were created. Daily, thousands of new digital assets are birthed into this world and the pace at which the number grows is greater than it has ever been. It is a diverse mix of art, utility, and finance—some of which are familiar to all of us. Each...
The Next Evolution of Digital Assets on Solana and the Death of the Old Gods
Over the last few years the world has slowly turned its bull market love for NFTs into bear market hate, yet the sprawling ecosystem that took roots on Solana has pushed on, and by now, over 300 million individual tokens in 180 thousand collections were created. Daily, thousands of new digital assets are birthed into this world and the pace at which the number grows is greater than it has ever been. It is a diverse mix of art, utility, and finance—some of which are familiar to all of us. Each...
Marinade Finance Liquidity Drought
When FTX and Alameda collapsed, many worried about the fate of the Solana blockchain and how the event might impact the DeFi ecosystem, and indeed the general mayhem that ensued during that week pushed everything to the limit. One of such cases is Marinade Finance which saw its instant unstake pool drained during the week of November 08-14, with any new liquidity being immediately sucked back out over the course of a few days. While this didn’t put the protocol itself at risk, it did offer an...
Marinade Finance Liquidity Drought
When FTX and Alameda collapsed, many worried about the fate of the Solana blockchain and how the event might impact the DeFi ecosystem, and indeed the general mayhem that ensued during that week pushed everything to the limit. One of such cases is Marinade Finance which saw its instant unstake pool drained during the week of November 08-14, with any new liquidity being immediately sucked back out over the course of a few days. While this didn’t put the protocol itself at risk, it did offer an...
A New Chapter for Solana Order Books
As the FTX situation was unraveling, the Solana community quickly realized that a core piece of infrastructure might be at risk. Despite Serum being run by its own DAO, the program update key was actually in the hands of someone connected to FTX, but no one knew who that was. Even more concerning is that on Nov 13, FTX itself was the subject of an apparent exploit, casting even more doubt over the security of the protocol, which could put at risk everyone interacting with Serum. At this point...
A New Chapter for Solana Order Books
As the FTX situation was unraveling, the Solana community quickly realized that a core piece of infrastructure might be at risk. Despite Serum being run by its own DAO, the program update key was actually in the hands of someone connected to FTX, but no one knew who that was. Even more concerning is that on Nov 13, FTX itself was the subject of an apparent exploit, casting even more doubt over the security of the protocol, which could put at risk everyone interacting with Serum. At this point...
Solana (Liquid) Staking Madness
Solana has been extremely busy this week trying to contain the mayhem created by the fall of FTX and Alameda, two of the largest entities with a stake in the Solana blockchain and ecosystem. One of the greatest threats posed by a sudden and dramatic decrease in the price of $SOL is that locked tokens will be unstaked and leave the Proof of Stake network a lot less secure and descentralized. But while regularly those staked tokens have to go through a cooldown period until the end of their sta...
Solana (Liquid) Staking Madness
Solana has been extremely busy this week trying to contain the mayhem created by the fall of FTX and Alameda, two of the largest entities with a stake in the Solana blockchain and ecosystem. One of the greatest threats posed by a sudden and dramatic decrease in the price of $SOL is that locked tokens will be unstaked and leave the Proof of Stake network a lot less secure and descentralized. But while regularly those staked tokens have to go through a cooldown period until the end of their sta...
