As a seasoned researcher with years of experience diving into the cryptic world of blockchain and decentralized finance (DeFi), I find myself both amused and bewildered by the tale of this MEV bot’s sandwich attack. On one hand, it’s fascinating to witness the complexity and speed at which these transactions can occur, all within a single block – a feat that would make even the fastest sandwich artist envious.
As a crypto investor, I found myself on the receiving end of an unfortunate incident involving a MEV bot that borrowed a staggering $11.9 million in a flash loan, only to carry out what seemed like a ‘sandwich attack’. Regrettably, this endeavor barely earned enough to cover my own humble meal costs.
On September 5th, Arkham Intelligence shared an update that showed how a MEV bot obtained a loan of approximately 11.97 million dollars’ worth of Wrapped Ether (WETH) to execute a “sandwich” trade on someone trying to swap around 5,000 dollars’ worth of Shuffle (SHFL) tokens. Although the stakes were significant, the bot only made a profit of roughly $20 after accounting for gas fees.
During the cyber-attack, the automated system performed 14 financial exchanges, both lending and borrowing approximately $700,000 worth of USDC and WETH tokens across various Decentralized Finance (DeFi) networks such as Aave and Uniswap. Remarkably, all these transactions were validated in a single block, indicating that they were accomplished within just 12 seconds.
How a Sandwich Attack Works
Instead of a “sandwich attack,” consider referring to it as a situation where an attacker strategically inserts two trades on either side of another trader’s transaction, aiming to influence the price by buying before and selling after. The goal is to pocket the difference between their own transactions and the victim’s trade. In this instance, the MEV bot’s earnings fell short of expectations.
Nevertheless, MEV bots have been lucrative in previous instances. For example, an individual known as *jaredfromsubway* amassed more than a million dollars within a single week in April 2023, by employing sandwich attacks on PEPE and WOJAK tokens.
Despite this bot’s failure, MEV attacks remain a highly profitable tool for many operators.
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2024-09-06 10:13