Solana Put 50,000 SOL Up for Security—But One Threat Fell Outside the Hunt

By Isaac • August 20, 2026 7:20 pm •

Solana just finished one of the largest public security hunts in crypto. The more interesting story is the attack that was never really eligible to enter.

Anza offered a prize pool of up to 50,000 SOL for researchers who found serious flaws in Alpenglow, the new consensus system being prepared for Solana. At current market prices, that pool represented more than $4 million worth of SOL.

Seven days before the contest closed, researchers presented a different Solana weakness at USENIX Security: a clock attack that can give a malicious block producer more real-world time than the protocol appears to allow.

CryptoSlate reported that the researchers had privately disclosed the issue to Solana developers in December 2025,