Investigation Alleges Solana Validators Sell Private Transaction Feeds for Front-Running

An investigation by Corvus Labs alleges that Solana validators are selling access to pending transaction data for up to $4,000 per month, enabling sophisticated traders to front-run and sandwich-attack DeFi users. The report claims Everstake, a major validator, offers a private data feed through Blockspace, though Everstake denies encouraging such activity and states it employs filtering mechanisms to prevent it. The issue stems from Solana's lack of a public mempool, which forces transactions directly to scheduled validators.