Solana is trading 1% lower Monday to $143.92 as the network works to restore investor confidence following the quiet disclosure of a major vulnerability in its token system.
The coin is down 3.8% over the past week but remains up 21.5% in the last month.
Solana Price Slips to $143.92 Amid Controversy Over Quiet Bug Fix
The bug, which affected Solana's privacy-focused Token-22 standard, could have allowed attackers to forge fake zero-knowledge proofs to mint unlimited tokens or withdraw assets from other users' wallets. Engineers from Solana's development teams responded quickly, issuing a patch within 24 hours of the vulnerability being disclosed on April 16.
The exploit stemmed from a flaw in the ZK ElGamal Proof program—technology used to validate confidential transfers without revealing private transaction details. The bug failed to include essential algebraic components during the Fiat-Shamir transformation, allowing sophisticated actors to bypass validation checks.
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Solana pushed the patch quietly to validators, who implemented it without alerting the public. By April 18, a supermajority of nodes had adopted the fix, and third-party audits confirmed no evidence of exploitation. But the decision to delay disclosure until the fix was in place sparked backlash among some in the community, who viewed the move as opaque and centralized.
"Am I hearing this right? There was a zero-day on Solana mainnet and >70% of the validators privately colluded to upgrade and patch the critical bug before it was even made public," one investor, Clouted, posted on X.
Others pointed to historical precedent, noting that Bitcoin and Ethereum have handled similar bugs quietly in the past. Solana's defenders argued the decision prioritized user protection over optics.
Meanwhile, Solana remains a top contender in the growing tokenization race. According to The Defiant, BlackRock's BUIDL fund allocated just over $20 million to Solana—less than other chains like Ethereum, Aptos, and Avalanche but still noteworthy.
And despite the recent controversy, the total supply of stablecoins on Solana just hit an all-time high of $13.1 billion, with USDC alone surpassing $10 billion on the network.
As the crypto sector continues to evolve, the incident underscores the tension between operational security and decentralization—especially as institutions like BlackRock deepen their exposure to on-chain assets.
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