The Solana Foundation announced it removed a group of validator operators from its delegation program due to their involvement in sandwich attacks on Solana users.

“Decisions in this matter are final. Enforcement actions are ongoing as we detect operators participating in mempools which allow sandwich attacks,” wrote Solana Validator Relations Lead Tim Garcia on the Solana Foundation’s Discord server.

The move will ensure that the foundation does not delegate to validators who carry out malicious sandwich attacks on retail users, explained Mert Mumtaz, co-founder of Solana RPC provider Helius.

Sandwich attacks are against the rules laid out by the Solana Foundation in a May 7 Discord post from Garcia.

A sandwich attack is a type of front-running exploit where an attacker places two …