Solana validators selling early trade access for $1,000 monthly payments

An investigation by Andrei Vacariu of Corvus Labs reveals that Solana validators are selling early access to pending transactions for monthly payments starting at 10 SOL ($1,000). Everstake, which manages 7.4 million delegated SOL, allegedly sells a private mempool data feed for $4,000 monthly via its Blockspace product, allowing quantitative traders to front-run retail orders. Everstake denies encouraging front-running, claiming it uses filtering mechanisms to prevent such activity.

Validator MEV data feed sales

• ▪Everstake, a Solana validator operator led by CEO David Kinitsky, sells a private data feed of pending transactions to quantitative traders for $4,000 per month.
• ▪Andrei Vacariu of Corvus Labs claimed that Everstake salespeople are soliciting additional Solana validator node operators to join their data-sharing scheme by offering monthly payments of over 10 SOL.
• ▪An investigation by Andrei Vacariu of Corvus Labs revealed that Solana validators are accepting payments starting at 10 SOL, worth approximately $1,000, monthly to leak early access to pending trades.

Solana mempool architecture

• ▪Unlike other blockchains, Solana does not feature a public mempool, meaning transactions are routed directly to the validator scheduled to produce the next block.
• ▪The absence of a public mempool on Solana was intended to minimize maximal extractable value by preventing traders from seeing transactions before they are executed.
• ▪The lack of a public mempool on Solana has led to the creation of private mempools where traders pay validators with over 15,000 SOL staked for early transaction data.

Front-running exploitation

• ▪Traders utilizing private validator data feeds can execute front-running and sandwich attacks against standard retail orders on Solana decentralized finance exchanges.
• ▪Andrei Vacariu of Corvus Labs stated that Solana traders cannot opt out of front-running risks because they cannot identify which block-producing validators are mirroring their transaction traffic.
• ▪Everstake clients can run specialized software to mirror incoming transaction traffic to Everstake servers before blocks are built, enabling them to front-run retail orders.

Everstake Blockspace service

• ▪Everstake packages its high-priority network access, known as stake-weighted quality of service, into a commercial product called Blockspace.
• ▪Everstake stated that it employs filtering mechanisms to prevent front-running and sandwich attacks and does not encourage these trading activities.
• ▪Everstake operates one of the largest validator nodes on the Solana network, with approximately 7.4 million SOL delegated to its main validator.

Validator payment network

• ▪Everstake is structured as an association of 39 validators that collectively control more than 50 million staked SOL on the Solana network.
• ▪The Solana validator Staking Facilities allegedly received over 950 SOL in Blockspace revenue-sharing payments since July 2026, while Prostaking collected over 200 SOL.
• ▪Andrei Vacariu of Corvus Labs traced Blockspace revenue-sharing payouts from a central vault to validators including Prostaking, RockawayX, Staking Facilities, and Stake.org.

Debatable claims

• ▪Solana validators should be prohibited from selling private transaction data
• ▪Solana should introduce a public mempool