SolPhishHunter: Towards Detecting and Understanding Phishing on Solana

Abstract: Solana is a rapidly evolving blockchain platform that has attracted an increasing number of users. However, this growth has also drawn the attention of malicious actors, with some phishers extending their reach into the Solana ecosystem. Unlike platforms such as Ethereum, Solana has distinct designs of accounts and transactions, leading to the emergence of new types of phishing transactions that we term SolPhish. We define three types of SolPhish and develop a detection tool called SolPhishHunter. Utilizing SolPhishHunter, we detect a total of 8,058 instances of SolPhish and conduct an empirical analysis of these detected cases. Our analysis explores the distribution and impact of SolPhish, the characteristics of the phishers, and the relationships among phishing gangs. Particularly, the detected SolPhish transactions have resulted in nearly \$1.1 million in losses for victims. We report our detection results to the community and construct SolPhishDataset, the \emph{first} Solana phishing-related dataset in academia.