Solana Proposal Targets Feature Behind At Least $270M Drift Drain

At least $270 million was drained from trading protocol Drift on April 1, and Solana proposal SIMD-0723 would retire the transaction mechanism involved. It does not mention Drift, citing years of technical failures instead.

Filed by Gabe Rodriguez of Anza on Nov. 5, 2026, the draft would narrow the validity period for Solana transactions. Anza is the firm behind Solana’s main validator software.

What does durable nonce change?

Ordinary Solana transactions carry a blockhash tied to a recent block. Because the network now produces 200-millisecond blocks, that reference expires after about 30 seconds. Durable nonce swaps replace it with a reference that never becomes stale.

A transaction signed today can therefore remain executable next month. Custodians and exchanges require that buffer because approvals often happen on air-gapped computers, kept off the internet. Transmitting a signature from those machines can take longer than 30 seconds.

The same flexibility enabled the Drift attackers, who obtained approvals signed in advance and left transactions pending for more than a week before emptying the platform. Drift later blamed the attack on a North Korean state-affiliated group. The attribution is Drift’s own statement; SIMD-0723 does not discuss the incident.

Offline custodians gained flexibility, while the Drift attackers gained the same ability to defer execution. In plain terms, the feature widened the execution window from seconds to weeks.

What does SIMD-0723 change?

SIMD-0723 states: “After activation, every transaction needs a recent blockhash.” It would standardize transaction validity around recent blocks and retire the non-expiring alternative.

One cited 2022 failure processed a failed transaction through both the blockhash and nonce paths, halting mainnet for about 4.5 hours. The draft presents that overlap as a mainnet reliability risk, not merely a security issue for one trading protocol.

After activation, custodians and exchanges relying on long-lived signatures would need to migrate. In plain terms, the proposal trades flexible approvals for stricter expiration.

When would migration happen?

The Solana Foundation announced a deprecation plan in October, and SIMD-0723 attaches the first date to that plan. It states: “The feature will not be activated on mainnet-beta before 2027-05-05.”

The draft gives users at least six months to migrate, counted from the proposal’s publication on Nov. 5, 2026. That is a stated minimum, not evidence that the migration is ready or complete.

The Foundation’s deprecation page still lists no date. It starts the six-month clock only once a replacement is ready, an unresolved dependency that could push the cutoff beyond May 2027. In plain terms, May 2027 remains conditional rather than firm.

Who would bear the migration?

Only a small group appears likely to face material disruption. In one June measurement, durable nonce transactions accounted for about 3% of Solana traffic while generating 30% of all priority fees, the tips users add to get transactions processed first.

Researcher Max Resnick’s data shows that 555 accounts sent 97.5% of those transactions. His post characterizes that traffic as durable nonce spam, although it does not identify who controls the accounts.

The proposal names custodians as a separate affected group, reflecting their reliance on the longer validity period. Exchanges also need that buffer because their approvals can occur on air-gapped systems. In plain terms, most traffic appears unaffected, while a small group of heavy users and custody-dependent operators must adapt.

If replacement work slips, the draft’s May 2027 milestone can slip with it. The next checkpoint is replacement readiness, because the Foundation starts the six-month migration period only after that milestone. In plain terms, the schedule still depends on the replacement arriving on time.