Solana developers have proposed removing the durable nonces feature, which allows signed transactions to remain valid indefinitely. This mechanism was identified as a key component in the April 2026 exploit of the decentralized exchange Drift.
The attack on Drift resulted in losses estimated between $270 million and $285 million, representing over 50% of the platform's total value locked at the time. Researchers linked the incident to the group UNC4736, which is associated with the Lazarus group.
The breach involved a six-month social engineering campaign targeting two members of the Drift Security Council. Attackers utilized pre-signed transactions to gain administrative control and drain reserves within minutes.
The Solana Foundation plans to replace durable nonces with onchain programmatic signer alternatives to maintain support for offline signing while improving security. The transition timeline remains unconfirmed, pending further audits and a migration window for institutional users.
Following the incident, Drift resumed operations under the name Velocity and introduced a new token, DFX, to assist affected users. The protocol identified the breach as a failure of operational security and human processes rather than a flaw in smart contract code.
