Incident Report: 37,000 SOL in Losses — A Call for Investigation and Action

8

Hello, Hanabi Staking.

All the data we’ve used comes directly from Marinade’s public GitHub repository.
We don’t claim our research is bulletproof — there may be some inaccuracies in calculations — but the point is not to point fingers. This is a call to action for honest validators (especially those who paid extra in the auction while others got away with free stake), for the Marinade team, for stakers, and for the Solana Foundation.

Regarding your validator:

Epoch 652 (honest epoch):

  • marinadeActivatedStakeSol: 1,325,361.20795302 SOL
  • mndeVotesSolValue: 272,255.7120319564 SOL
  • bidCpmpe: 0.072
  • MIN_effective_BID (our synthetic benchmark): 0.032
  • Bond: 143.969835 SOL

Everything looks good here — above-board. Your bid was higher than the minimum effective bid. Respect.

Epoch 653 (honest epoch):

  • marinadeActivatedStakeSol: 1,289,942.373474436 SOL
  • mndeVotesSolValue: 269,861.9162648218 SOL
  • bidCpmpe: 0.072
  • MIN_effective_BID: 0.036
  • Bond: 144.0264425 SOL

Epoch 654 (honest epoch):

  • marinadeActivatedStakeSol: 1,279,233.062946955 SOL
  • mndeVotesSolValue: 260,437.97847842556 SOL
  • bidCpmpe: 0.072
  • MIN_effective_BID: 0.041
  • Bond: 138.7164095 SOL

Epoch 655 (honest epoch):

  • marinadeActivatedStakeSol: 1,285,522.254107788 SOL
  • mndeVotesSolValue: 258,296.44667693958 SOL
  • bidCpmpe: 0.072
  • MIN_effective_BID: 0.047
  • Bond: 137.0949374 SOL

And then things get… interesting.

Epoch 656 (first cheat epoch):

  • marinadeActivatedStakeSol: 1,269,974.495241598 SOL
  • mndeVotesSolValue: 257,386.63044062708 SOL
  • bidCpmpe: 0.000000001
  • MIN_effective_BID: 0.084
  • Bond: 144.1300651 SOL

Epoch 657:

You withdrew just over 100 SOL from your bond, leaving:

  • Bond: 38.949840178 SOL
  • bidCpmpe: 0.000000001
  • marinadeActivatedStakeSol: 1,086,812.941787907 SOL

And from that point onward — from epoch 657 through 698 — you continued to receive free Marinade stake for 46 epochs straight. After that, you operated with minimal or no stake from Marinade.

Now, if the intent was to stop receiving Marinade delegation, the logical move would’ve been to fully withdraw the bond. But instead, you left 39 SOL in and dropped your bid to 0.000000001.
Even if that wasn’t intentional — a simple mistake perhaps — don’t you think that, as an honest validator and community member, you had a responsibility to report to Marinade that your bid was nearly zero, and yet you were still receiving significant delegation?

It’s hard not to interpret that behavior as, at the very least, knowingly opportunistic — possibly even malicious.
But it’s not up to us to decide — it’s up to the community, the Marinade team, and the Solana Foundation, especially given that you’re also a validator under the SFDP program.

4 Likes