Could the Solana-based Drift $285 million hack have been prevented earlier? The Solana Foundation and some security researchers certainly believe so.
As a result, the Foundation has unveiled a two-tiered ecosystem-wide security initiative to pre-empt and address looming attacks against major protocols before they happen.
The first layer will be Solana Trust, Resilience, and Infrastructure for DeFi Enterprises (STRIDE). It will evaluate, monitor, and escalate security issues across Solana DeFi projects with over $10M in TVL (total value locked).
Additionally, it will set standards for security requirements for every Solana protocol, including independent evaluations and public findings.
For protocols with $100M in TVL and above, the Solana Foundation will support formal security verification. The end goal is to detect threats before they become incidents. But it doesn’t stop at active threat monitoring.
The second tier, dubbed SIRN, or Solana Incident Response Network, comprises security firms and researchers to secure the entire ecosystem that will react to threat incidents.
Some security firms include Asymmetric Research, OtterSec, Neodyme, Squads, and ZeroShadow. Overall, the security upgrade will help investors understand the risk profile of the protocols they’re interacting with.
Will Solana win investors’ trust?
As stated earlier, the ecosystem-wide security upgrade comes after Drift lost over $285M. The hack was traced to North Korea through social engineering that took 6 months.
Security experts from TRM Labs noted that Drift wasted its ‘reaction window’ and acted late to prevent the incident after weeks of prior red flags.
Besides, some experts claimed that proper background checks of the threat actors, who allegedly met Drift physically at various industry events, could have prevented the incident.
That said, key ecosystem players welcomed the move. In particular, Allan Marshall, CEO of Upexi, a Solana treasury firm, said,
Every enterprise I’ve talked to asks if the security and infrastructure of blockchain is ready for their needs before anything else. Glad to see Solana continue to build out its infrastructure to welcome more institutional players.
Similar sentiment was reinforced by other supporters, who viewed trust as the foundation of DeFi and adoption.
That said, it’s been a week since the Drift incident was made public, and Solana’s stablecoin supply remained unchanged at $14B, underscoring that DeFi liquidity remained unchanged (0.19% drop).
Put differently, investors didn’t flee Solana after the Drift incident. Now, it remains to be seen whether the new security upgrades will bolster more confidence.
Final Summary
- The Solana Foundation has unveiled a new 24/7 security threat monitoring and response network for its DeFi protocols.
- Priority will be given to protocols with $10M and +$100M in total assets in a bid to minimize security incidents and boost investor confidence.
