Solana Foundation looks to beef up DeFi security as attacks continue

The Solana Foundation on Monday announced a new security auditing framework for Solana-based protocols in addition to an incident-response network, warning that “adversaries are rapidly innovating.”

The Solana Foundation, a Swiss organization that supports the adoption and security of Solana, and Web3 security firm Asymmetric Research unveiled the Solana Trust, Resilience and Infrastructure for DeFi Enterprises (STRIDE), stating that it was a “structured program for evaluating, monitoring and escalating security across Solana projects.”

The initiative works to evaluate the security of protocols across eight pillars: program security, governance and access control, oracle and dependency risk, infrastructure security, supply chain security, operational security, monitoring and incident response, as well as log management and forensics. 

Protocols are independently assessed against these requirements, with findings published publicly, said Asymmetric Research. “This gives users, investors, and the broader ecosystem real transparency into the security posture of the protocols they interact with.”

The announcement comes just a week after one of the largest DeFi exploits this year, with the Drift Protocol losing around $280 million following a social engineering attack from North Korean-linked threat actors. 

Solana Incident Response Network

The Solana Foundation also announced the Solana Incident Response Network (SIRN), a network of security firms for real-time incident response across the Solana ecosystem. 

“Members will share threat intelligence, coordinate responses to active incidents, and contribute to the ongoing evolution of the STRIDE framework,” it stated. 

Related: Crypto hackers steal $169M from 34 DeFi protocols in Q1: DefiLlama

The foundation did not mention artificial-intelligence agents directly, but the announcement comes at a time when they are becoming an increasing threat to crypto protocols. 

In January, $40 million was drained from the Solana DeFi platform Step Finance, with AI agents amplifying the damage by executing large transfers autonomously, KuCoin reported last week. 

Attackers hit 34 DeFi protocols in Q1

Malicious actors stole over $168 million in cryptocurrency from 34 DeFi protocols in the first quarter of 2026, according to data from DefiLlama. 

However, the figure has fallen significantly from the same period last year, when $1.58 billion was pilfered in Q1, 2025.

The largest exploit for the period was the private key compromise of Step Finance. 

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