In response to the recent $270 million Drift Protocol exploit, the Solana Foundation has announced a range of security measures aimed at bolstering the network's defenses. The new initiatives, unveiled just five days after the attack, include Stride, a comprehensive evaluation program led by Asymmetric Research that will assess Solana DeFi protocols against eight key security pillars and publicly disclose its findings. Additionally, the Solana Incident Response Network (SIRN) has been established as a membership-based group of security firms and researchers 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 in the attack, in which the attackers spent six months building relationships with Drift contributors and compromised their devices through malicious means.
Under the Stride program, protocols with over $10 million in total value locked (TVL) that pass the evaluation will be eligible for ongoing operational security and active threat monitoring, funded by Solana Foundation grants. Protocols with over $100 million in TVL will also be eligible for formal verification, a mathematical method that checks every possible execution path in a smart contract to guarantee correctness.
The SIRN network, which includes founding members such as OtterSec, Neodyme, Squads, and ZeroShadow, will be available to all Solana protocols, with priority given to those with higher TVL. The Solana Foundation has emphasized that these programs do not shift the underlying responsibility away from the protocols themselves, highlighting the importance of individual contributor device security in preventing similar attacks in the future.