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Solana Developers Propose Retiring Durable Nonces, the Feature Exploited in the Drift Hack

Solana Developers Propose Retiring Durable Nonces, the Feature Exploited in the Drift Hack

Anza's SIMD-0723 would end durable nonces, used to drain at least $270 million from Drift in April; activation no earlier than May 2027.

Solana developers have proposed removing durable nonces, the feature that let attackers drain at least $270 million from the Drift trading protocol in April. CoinDesk reported that Gabe Rodriguez of Anza, the company behind Solana’s main validator software, filed the proposal, SIMD-0723, on November 5. It would not activate on mainnet-beta before May 5, 2027, and still needs technical sign-off from at least one engineer at Anza and one at Firedancer, the rival client built by Jump. The Solana Foundation announced a related plan in October, but its deprecation page lists no date, so the timeline could slip.

Durable nonces allow a signed transaction to stay valid for weeks, unlike the standard blockhash, which expires after about 30 seconds. In the Drift case, attackers obtained pre-signed approvals and let them sit for more than a week before using them, and Drift blamed a North Korean state-affiliated group. The proposal itself does not mention Drift. It cites a 2022 incident that halted mainnet for about 4.5 hours.

The change would hit custodians and exchanges that sign on air-gapped machines. Data from researcher Max Resnick showed durable nonce transactions were about 3% of traffic in one June period but paid 30% of priority fees, with 555 accounts sending 97.5% of them. Replacement options such as Anza’s Programmatic Signer carry their own risks, the draft warns.

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