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March 12, 2026
Updated March 14, 2026
14 min read

What Is MEV on Solana? How Sandwich Attacks Stole $500M from Traders

MEV on Solana drained $370–500M from traders in 16 months. Learn how sandwich attacks work on Raydium, how Jito bundles protect you, and why copy traders are uniquely exposed.

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TL;DR

MEV (Maximal Extractable Value) on Solana refers to profit extracted by bots that reorder or front-run your transactions. Sandwich attacks — the most harmful form — drained an estimated $370–500M from traders in 16 months. Protection exists via Jito defensive bundles, but copy traders face compounded exposure that most platforms don't address.

F

Florian

Founder & Head of Quant — Stratium

Written by

F

Florian

Founder & Head of Quant — Stratium

Florian is the founder and Head of Quant at Stratium. With 5+ years of experience in quantitative finance and algorithmic trading, he built the copy trading engine from the ground up on Solana — designing the strategy curation framework, FIFO PnL engine, position sizing models, and on-chain execution infrastructure. He writes about quantitative trading, Solana DeFi, and the data behind copy trading performance.

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