Solana fixes sandwich attacks: How MEV protection reshapes the competition landscape of public blockchains

In April 2026, public chain competition has shifted from simple technical parameter comparisons to deeper systemic strategic battles. The efficiency of block space allocation, fairness in transaction execution, and governance of MEV (Maximum Extractable Value) are gradually replacing transaction per second (TPS) and fee levels as the key metrics for measuring a public chain’s ability to carry real financial traffic. Against this backdrop, the Solana network officially fixed a long-exploited sandwich attack vulnerability on April 8, marking a significant step forward in Solana’s MEV governance.

According to Gate data, as of April 10, 2026, Solana (SOL) was priced at approximately $83.03, with a market cap of about $47.72 billion, accounting for roughly 2.00% of the total market. In the DeFi total value locked (TVL) market of approximately $95.3 billion, Solana ranks second with about $6.8 billion, roughly one-tenth the scale of Ethereum’s DeFi ecosystem. The ongoing improvement in MEV governance capability is becoming an important support for Solana’s vision of an “Internet capital market.”

Key Vulnerability Fixes End the Era of Simple Sandwich Attacks

On April 8, 2026, the Solana network implemented a fix that addressed a critical vulnerability enabling simple sandwich attacks. Sandwich attacks are a typical form of MEV extraction, where malicious actors place transactions before and after a victim’s transaction to exploit price fluctuations for profit. In Solana’s high-frequency trading environment, such attacks can be completed in less than a second—previously, a bot executed a sandwich attack on a trade of about 196.46 SOL on Raydium, earning roughly 22.19 SOL in a single block.

This fix effectively mitigates this specific value extraction vector. A network engineer familiar with the update stated that “this creates a fairer environment for all participants on the Solana blockchain.” Notably, Lucas Bruder, co-founder and CEO of Jito Labs, also pointed out that “malicious extraction now accounts for only a small part of block space activity, while most transaction ordering reflects legitimate competition for inclusion and speed.”

From “Memory Pool Controversy” to the Evolution of Systemic Governance

Solana’s MEV governance has not been achieved overnight but has undergone a long process of technical exploration and community debate.

Phase 1: Advantages and Limitations of a No Global Memory Pool Architecture (2020-2023)

At its inception, Solana’s continuous block production and architecture without a global public memory pool were seen as inherently resistant to MEV. Unlike Ethereum’s transparent public transaction pool, Solana’s transactions are routed directly to the current leader node, theoretically reducing the risk of being “peeked at” and front-run.

Phase 2: Jito Client and Memory Pool Controversy (2024)

As the ecosystem flourished, MEV attackers found new attack vectors. Early 2024, Jito Labs released a modified Solana validator client allowing users to submit transactions directly to block producers via “bundles,” bypassing the public routing. However, the public memory pool service operated by Jito sparked fierce debate. In March 2024, after strong community opposition to its negative impact on the ecosystem, Jito ceased the public memory pool service, leading to a sharp decline in its revenue. This move reduced harmful MEV activities but also led to the rise of alternative, less transparent memory pools mainly benefiting certain groups.

Phase 3: BAM Scheme and the Introduction of TOV Concepts (2025)

In July 2025, Jito launched the Block Assembly Marketplace (BAM), which reconstructs Solana’s block building process using dedicated hardware and a decentralized validation network. Developers called it the “MEV terminator.” BAM separates block space allocation from validator responsibilities, making harmful MEV behaviors like sandwich attacks technically difficult to execute. Simultaneously, Jito proposed the concept of “transaction ordering value,” a neutral priority system balancing block space scarcity and preventing malicious activities.

Phase 4: The April 2026 Vulnerability Fix (2026)

This fix marks a pivotal node in Solana’s MEV governance roadmap, signifying a strategic shift from reliance on third-party tools (like Jito) to protocol-level proactive defenses against attack channels.

Attack Scale, Economic Costs, and Defensive Effectiveness

Scale and User Impact

Sandwich attacks on Solana have become highly scaled. Internal analysis by Jito shows that between December 7, 2024, and January 5, 2025, a single entity’s sandwich trading bot executed 1.55 million sandwich trades, earning about 65,880 SOL (roughly $13.43 million at the time), with an average profit of 0.0425 SOL (~$8.67). Data also indicates that one attack program’s profits surged from about $30 million over two months to approximately $287 million over six months. In 2025 alone, sandwich attacks extracted over $400 million from Solana DeFi traders.

Economic Structure of Attack Patterns

Notably, after 2026, malicious sandwich attacks are no longer the primary use of MEV techniques. Data shows that last month, MEV attackers paid only about 5 SOL for bot activities, with most attacks targeting transactions under $1, causing no significant daily losses. Two main factors drive this shift: first, the high costs of competitive MEV use (estimated at up to $720 million annually in bribes) make traditional sandwich attacks economically unviable; second, the slowdown of Solana token trading speeds and more rational DEX activity reduce arbitrage opportunities for attackers.

Jito’s Coverage and Effectiveness

Currently, nearly 90% of Solana transactions are processed via the Jito client, which has become the main hub for high-efficiency transaction applications. Jito has bundled over 3 billion transactions, earning about 3.75 million SOL in tips. Solana has also introduced private transaction routing, trusted execution environments (like Jito’s BAM system), and new proposal processes to keep transactions confidential before execution, greatly increasing the difficulty of executing predatory MEV bot strategies.

Comparison with Ethereum’s MEV Governance Path

Ethereum’s MEV-Boost essentially “marketizes” MEV—separating block building from proposing, redistributing MEV profits between builders and proposers—but does not fundamentally eliminate sandwich attacks. Recently, Vitalik Buterin proposed the FOCIL mechanism, which involves randomly selecting participants to enforce inclusion of specific transactions, aiming to limit front-running and sandwich attacks. In contrast, Solana’s BAM approach prefers a structural overhaul of block building, making harmful MEV behaviors technically difficult. The choice between these reflects different blockchain trade-offs between “decentralization” and “performance.”

Three Main Narratives and Divergent Foci

Industry discussions around Solana’s MEV governance mainly fall into three typical narratives:

Optimistic Tech View — “MEV Governance Will Become Solana’s Core Competitiveness”

This view sees Solana’s development of the Jito-led block building marketplace and recent vulnerability fix as systematically building MEV defenses. With upgrades like Firedancer delivering higher throughput and Alpenglow targeting sub-second finality, Solana’s user experience in high-frequency trading and payments will further improve. Under this narrative, MEV governance capability is a key factor elevating Solana from a “meme hotspot” to an “Internet capital market.”

Cautious Skepticism — “Concerns Over Permissioned Aspects and Mempool Transparency”

This perspective is cautious about Jito’s dominant role in block space allocation. With nearly 90% of transactions processed via Jito, control over block space is highly concentrated. Although Jito stopped the public mempool to reduce harmful MEV, private mempools have emerged, mainly benefiting certain groups. Whitelisting mechanisms, while seen as last-resort tools against bad actors, risk creating semi-permissioned, censored environments, conflicting with decentralization principles.

Competitive Analysis — “Public Chain Race, MEV Governance Will Decide the Outcome”

Wintermute CEO Evgeny Gaevoy recently warned that despite Ethereum’s $56 billion TVL leading DeFi and Solana’s $6.8 billion ranking second, neither chain has established a true “moat.” In this framework, MEV governance is a critical metric for whether a public chain can support institutional-grade financial flows. 2026 is widely seen as a pivotal year for the Ethereum-Solana face-off—Ethereum must prove it’s more than just a “safe asset layer,” while Solana must demonstrate it’s not merely a “high-performance testing ground.” The maturity of MEV governance is becoming a core standard distinguishing “experimental playgrounds” from “financial infrastructure.”

Industry Impact Analysis: How MEV Governance Reshapes Public Chain Competition at Three Levels

The recent fix impacts the public chain landscape across three levels:

User Level — Quantitative Improvement in Transaction Fairness

The most direct impact of MEV protection is on user experience. Based on Jito’s protective effects, a $1 transaction on low-liquidity tokens that might have lost 2-5% (about 0.02-0.05 SOL) to sandwich attacks can now see this hidden cost greatly reduced when submitted via Jito bundles. Over millions of daily transactions on Solana, this incremental improvement accumulates significantly.

Ecosystem Level — Developer and Capital “Voting with Their Feet”

MEV governance capability is increasingly a key factor for developers choosing a blockchain. A March 2026 developer guide notes that protocol-level slippage enforcement and Jito bundle integration are now standard practices among Solana DeFi developers. If Solana continues to demonstrate superior MEV protection compared to Ethereum’s mempool exposure, ecosystem migration could tilt in its favor.

Narrative Level — From “Performance Blockchain” to “Trusted Execution Environment”

The blockchain narrative is undergoing a profound shift. Industry analysis in April 2026 shows core competition moving from cost to specialization—Bitcoin expanding asset utility, Ethereum consolidating as a settlement layer, and Solana focusing on high-frequency payments and trading. In this context, MEV governance directly influences whether Solana can truly establish a “high-frequency, fair, predictable” trading environment, supporting its vision of an “Internet capital market.”

Multi-Scenario Evolution and Three Possible Paths

Scenario 1: Positive Path — “MEV Protection Creates a Positive Feedback Loop”

The recent fix, combined with BAM optimizations, continuously improves Solana’s transaction fairness, attracting more DeFi protocols and institutional participants. MEV profits shift from attackers to validators and Jito network, fostering healthier profit distribution. Ethereum’s ePBS upgrade and FOCIL mechanism advance in tandem, each forging unique MEV governance paths, raising industry standards collectively.

Scenario 2: Neutral Path — “Ongoing Arms Race, Long-term MEV Governance Deadlock”

Attackers develop new strategies to bypass BAM and protocol defenses, leading to a prolonged game of cat and mouse. Jito’s dominance in block building raises concerns over decentralization, prompting community efforts for more diverse block construction solutions. MEV governance becomes a “chronic challenge,” continuously draining ecosystem resources and community attention.

Scenario 3: Challenged Path — “Centralization of Governance Sparks Trust Crisis”

With nearly 90% of transactions processed via Jito, concerns over centralization grow. Private mempools and whitelists are criticized as “de facto permissioning,” conflicting with decentralization ideals. Some validators gain outsized advantages through MEV profits, undermining fairness. Users and developers may migrate to alternative high-performance chains, weakening Solana’s competitive edge.

Conclusion: MEV Governance — A New Dimension of Public Chain Competitiveness

The April 8 fix of the sandwich attack vulnerability on Solana, though just a technical milestone in MEV governance, reflects a deep shift in public chain logic. As block space costs shrink and transaction fees cease to be a competitive barrier, differentiation increasingly hinges on “predictability of execution environment” and “fairness of value distribution.”

For Solana, the success of MEV governance is not only about micro-improvements in user experience but also about whether it can evolve from a “high-performance testing ground” into a “trusted financial infrastructure.” For the industry, Ethereum’s market-oriented path via PBS and Solana’s structural overhaul represent two distinct MEV governance paradigms. The superiority of either remains uncertain, but what is clear is that in 2026 and beyond, MEV governance capability will be a core dimension in measuring public chain competitiveness. The outcome of this strategic contest will profoundly influence the flow of trillions of dollars in on-chain financial assets.