In response to the recent $270 million exploit of the Drift Protocol, a decentralized finance platform on Solana, the Solana Foundation has unveiled a series of security measures. The centerpiece of this initiative is Stride, a program led by Asymmetric Research that evaluates Solana DeFi protocols against eight key security pillars and publicly discloses the findings. Additionally, the Solana Incident Response Network (SIRN) has been established as a membership-based group of security experts and firms focused on providing real-time crisis response. While these measures address some of the vulnerabilities exposed by the Drift hack, they do not directly address the human element that was exploited, where attackers built relationships with Drift contributors over six months and compromised their devices.
Protocols with over $10 million in total value locked that pass the Stride evaluation will receive continuous operational security and active threat monitoring, funded by Solana Foundation grants, with the level of coverage tailored to the protocol's specific risk profile. For larger protocols with over $100 million in total value locked, the foundation will also fund formal verification, a rigorous mathematical method that checks all possible execution paths in a smart contract to ensure correctness. The SIRN is available to all Solana protocols, with priority given based on total value locked. Founding members of the network include OtterSec, Neodyme, Squads, and ZeroShadow.
Although Stride's formal verification would not have prevented the North Korean attack, which relied on compromised devices to obtain multisignature approvals, the Solana Incident Response Network could have potentially expedited the response to the attack. The foundation emphasizes that these programs do not shift the fundamental responsibility for security away from the protocols themselves, highlighting the importance of individual contributor device security in preventing such attacks. Solana already offers several free security tools for developers, including Hypernative for threat detection, Range Security for real-time monitoring, and Neodyme's Riverguard for simulating attacks.