Validators on the Solana blockchain are accepting monthly payments in exchange for early access to trades pending execution, according to a recent investigation by Corvus Labs researcher Andrei Vacariu.
Payments begin at 10 SOL ($1,000) monthly, with some offerings reaching $4,000 per month, according to Vacariu's findings. The data feed provides real-time access to pre-execution transactions, allowing traders to front-run and sandwich-attack common orders on decentralized finance exchanges.
Everstake, which operates one of Solana's larger validators with approximately 7.4 million SOL delegated to it, offers the premium service through a division called Blockspace. The company, led by David Kinitsky, a former Grayscale founding general manager, reportedly employs salespeople actively recruiting additional validator operators to join the arrangement.
Vacariu outlined the impact on regular Solana users, stating that traders cannot determine which validators are monitoring their traffic or opt out of the system.
Solana's Mempool Design
Unlike other blockchains with public memory pools where pending transactions are freely accessible, Solana routes most transactions directly to the validator scheduled to produce the next block, bypassing any public queue. This design was intended to minimize MEV opportunities by limiting visibility of pending trades.
However, MEV extraction has instead concentrated among entities capable of paying validators thousands of dollars for direct access. Customers can run Everstake software that mirrors incoming traffic to company servers before block creation, allowing them to execute transactions earlier than retail orders.
Validator Payouts
Everstake operates as an association of 39 validators collectively holding over 50 million SOL. Vacariu identified payments from Blockspace's revenue-sharing wallet disbursed to operators including Prostaking, RockawayX, Staking Facilities, and Stake.org.
Staking Facilities reportedly received more than 950 SOL in such payments since July, while Prostaking allegedly collected over 200 SOL.
Everstake stated that it uses filtering mechanisms to prevent front-running and sandwich attacks, and does not encourage such activity.
