In response to the recent $270 million exploit of DeFi platform Drift Protocol, the Solana Foundation has launched a suite of security initiatives. The centerpiece of this effort is Stride, a structured evaluation program led by Asymmetric Research that will assess Solana DeFi protocols against eight key security pillars and publicly disclose its findings.

Additionally, the foundation has introduced the Solana Incident Response Network (SIRN), a membership-based group of security firms and researchers focused on providing real-time crisis response. While these initiatives address some of the issues exposed by the Drift exploit, they do not directly address the human vulnerability that led to the loss. The attackers had spent six months building relationships with Drift contributors and compromised their devices through a malicious code repository and a fake TestFlight app.

Under the Stride program, protocols with over $10 million in total value locked (TVL) that pass the evaluation will receive ongoing operational security and active threat monitoring, funded by Solana Foundation grants. Protocols with over $100 million in TVL will also receive funding for formal verification, a mathematical method that checks every possible execution path in a smart contract to guarantee correctness. The SIRN is available to all Solana protocols, with priority given to those with higher TVL. The founding members of SIRN include Asymmetric Research, OtterSec, Neodyme, Squads, and ZeroShadow.

Although Stride's formal verification would not have caught the North Korean attack, which used compromised devices to obtain multisig approvals, the SIRN could have potentially helped with the response. The foundation has emphasized that these programs do not transfer the underlying responsibility 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 builders, including Hypernative for threat detection, Range Security for real-time monitoring, and Neodyme's Riverguard for attack simulation.