Solana's MEV Crackdown Cuts Sandwich Attack Profits by 70% While 75% of SOL Reaches Historic Staking Milestone

What Happened: Solana’s ecosystem took coordinated action against MEV exploits in 2025, slashing sandwich attack profitability by 60–70%. Meanwhile, 415 million SOL tokens—75% of circulating supply—are now staked as institutions and retail holders flock to native staking options.

The Hidden Tax on Solana Users

For 16 consecutive months, a silent drain threatened everyday Solana traders. Sandwich attacks—where validators or bots detect pending transactions and insert their own orders before and after—extracted an estimated $370 to $500 million from the network. At their peak, certain malicious operators embedded these exploits in as much as 27% of their produced blocks, turning block validation into a private wealth transfer.

The low fees and lightning-fast settlement times that made Solana attractive also made it a hunting ground for MEV predators. Users complained of inexplicable slippage and front-running losses, but the scale of the problem remained largely invisible until researchers quantified the damage.

The Ecosystem Fights Back

The Turning Point Arrives in 2025

Rather than letting this persist, major stakeholders moved decisively. Marinade Finance blacklisted over 50 validators caught executing sandwich attacks, protecting more than $2 billion in delegated stakes. The Solana Foundation withdrew malicious operators from its delegation programs, making clear that MEV abuse would no longer be treated as acceptable behavior.

The most impactful move came from Jito Foundation, which closed its public mempool in March 2025. This single infrastructure change removed the easiest attack surface—the transparent pool where malicious actors could monitor and front-run pending transactions.

Measurable Results

The coordinated response worked. Sandwich attack profitability plummeted 60–70%. Complaints about excessive slippage and front-running across major Solana DEXs dropped roughly 60%. The attacks didn’t vanish, but they became significantly riskier and less rewarding.

Staking Reaches a Structural Inflection Point

As MEV concerns eased, Solana’s staking landscape underwent its own transformation. By end of 2025, the network reached a critical threshold: 75% of SOL’s circulating supply—approximately 415 million tokens—is now staked across validators.

This represented more than quantitative growth. Institutional inflows in Q3 2025 reached $530 million, while weekly transaction volumes climbed to roughly 600 million. The composition of stakers shifted dramatically.

Native Staking’s Rise Challenges Liquid Staking Dominance

For years, liquid staking tokens (LSTs) dominated because of their flexibility in DeFi protocols. That narrative changed in 2025. Native staking began closing the usability gap that once favored LSTs.

Marinade Finance’s native staking TVL jumped 21% quarter-over-quarter to 5.3 million SOL, surpassing its own mSOL liquid staking token offering. Improvements to user experience—cleaner interfaces, instant exit mechanisms directly from self-custody wallets—removed the friction that once made native staking feel restrictive.

For institutional investors and risk-conscious holders, native staking offered a cleaner value proposition: yield generation without smart contract layers, rehypothecation risks, or regulatory ambiguity.

Liquid staking didn’t disappear. It remained the preferred option for DeFi-intensive strategies requiring composability. But native staking captured a new category of capital: holders prioritizing custody clarity and protocol risk minimization.

The Staking Base Becomes More Sophisticated

The 75% staking participation conceals a deeper shift in behavior. Retail wallets increased their stake. Mid-sized crypto-native funds began optimizing delegation strategies based on validator uptime, MEV policies, and track record performance. Institutional custodians still controlled a disproportionate share, but the staking ecosystem developed genuine diversity for the first time.

The “set and forget” mentality evaporated. Stakers in 2025 actively monitored their validator choices, responding to ecosystem developments and security improvements.

What’s Next

Solana’s 2025 represented a maturing network confronting its internal vulnerabilities head-on. The 75% staking ratio reflects confidence that these issues are being addressed. Whether this level of participation remains sustainable depends on maintaining the MEV vigilance that produced such dramatic improvements.

Data Note: SOL currently trades with a 24-hour change of -6.05%, with 565.58 million tokens in circulation.