Solana rolls out new DeFi safeguards after Drift attack

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Solana rolls out new DeFi safeguards

Highlights

STRIDE introduces independent reviews, public reports, and continuous monitoring for Solana DeFi.
Protocols with TVL above $10 million will be eligible for 24/7 threat monitoring, while projects above $100 million will qualify for formal verification.
SIRN is meant to shorten response times during attacks after the $280 million to $285 million Drift Protocol hack.

How Solana is reworking DeFi security

According to Cryptopolitan, the Solana Foundation unveiled a package of new initiatives on April 6. At its core is STRIDE, a program being developed with Asymmetric Research and presented as a unified security assessment standard for Solana DeFi. Protocols will undergo independent reviews across eight categories, and the results are expected to be published openly so that users and investors can see how reliable a given service is.

For projects with total value locked, or TVL, above $10 million, Solana says it will provide round-the-clock threat monitoring after they complete the assessment. For protocols with TVL above $100 million, the foundation will separately fund formal verification, meaning a mathematical review of smart contracts across all possible execution scenarios. This marks a noticeable shift away from the typical DeFi model, where security has often been limited to a pre-launch audit and fixes made only after an incident.

A direct response to the Drift Protocol Hack

The new security architecture is directly tied to the attack on Drift Protocol. The attacker gained control of the Security Council’s administrative powers by using durable nonce accounts and pre-signed transactions. Restrictions on withdrawals were then removed and a malicious asset was added, allowing at least $280 million to be drained, while PeckShield estimated the damage at roughly $285 million.

Against that backdrop, Solana also launched SIRN, the Solana Incident Response Network, a rapid response network for security incidents. Its members include Asymmetric Research, OtterSec, Neodyme, Squads, and ZeroShadow. According to the foundation, participants in the network will share threat intelligence, coordinate actions during active attacks, and help improve the STRIDE system itself. In other words, this is an attempt to move incident response away from an ad hoc approach and toward a permanent, organized infrastructure.

A new standard for a more mature DeFi market

Solana is effectively acknowledging that audits alone are no longer enough for a mature DeFi ecosystem. The foundation separately stresses that the new tools do not remove responsibility from the protocols themselves, but are meant to raise the baseline level of protection across the network.

At the same time, all ecosystem projects are still expected to receive free access to a number of security services, including Hypernative threat detection systems, Range Security monitoring, Neodyme’s Riverguard attack simulation, as well as tools from Sec3 and AuditWare.

In effect, Solana is trying to respond not only to one specific hack, but also to a broader question: how to protect DeFi in an environment where attacks are becoming more sophisticated and increasingly target not just bugs in code, but also processes, permissions, and human error.

In an earlier report, we noted that Solana edges higher after $280 million DeFi breach on Drift Protocol.

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