The Solana Foundation has announced a new security auditing framework alongside an incident-response network, cautioning that adversaries are rapidly innovating in their attacks on decentralized finance protocols. The Swiss organization, which supports the adoption and security of Solana, made the announcement on Monday in partnership with Web3 security firm Asymmetric Research. Together, they introduced the Solana Trust, Resilience and Infrastructure for DeFi Enterprises (STRIDE) program.
STRIDE is described as a structured program for evaluating, monitoring, and escalating security across Solana-based projects. The initiative assesses protocols against eight distinct pillars: program security, governance and access control, oracle and dependency risk, infrastructure security, supply chain security, operational security, monitoring and incident response, and log management and forensics. Each protocol is independently evaluated against these requirements, with findings made available to the public.
Asymmetric Research stated that publishing findings publicly gives users, investors, and the broader ecosystem genuine transparency into the security posture of the protocols they interact with. This level of openness is intended to build trust across the DeFi landscape and encourage higher security standards among participating projects. The framework represents a formalized approach to a challenge that has grown increasingly urgent as the sector expands.
The Solana Foundation also unveiled the Solana Incident Response Network (SIRN), a coordinated network of security firms designed to provide real-time incident response across the Solana ecosystem. Members of SIRN will share threat intelligence, coordinate responses to active incidents, and contribute to the ongoing development of the STRIDE framework. The dual announcement signals a broader effort to institutionalize security practices within the Solana ecosystem.
The launch comes shortly after one of the largest DeFi exploits of the year, in which Drift Protocol lost approximately $280 million following a social engineering attack attributed to North Korean-linked threat actors. Earlier in January, around $40 million was drained from the Solana DeFi platform Step Finance, with AI agents reported to have amplified the damage by autonomously executing large transfers, according to KuCoin. Although the Solana Foundation did not directly reference artificial intelligence agents in its announcement, the timing highlights growing concerns about their role in crypto exploits.
Broader data from DefiLlama shows that malicious actors stole over $168 million in cryptocurrency from 34 DeFi protocols during the first quarter of 2026. While the figure remains significant, it represents a sharp decline compared to the same period in 2025, when $1.58 billion was stolen. The largest single exploit in the most recent quarter was the private key compromise of Step Finance.
Originally reported by CoinTelegraph.
