A Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) bot has earned over $1 million this week by conducting “sandwich attacks” on buyers and sellers of two new meme coins, Pepe (PEPE) and Wojak (WOJAK).
Sealaunch, a non-fungible token (NFT) data platform, reported on April 19, 2023, that a wallet address associated with the Ethereum Name Service (ENS) domain “jaredfromsubway.eth” earned $950,000 from sandwich attacks on April 18, 2023. This same wallet address also earned approximately $300,000 and $400,000 on April 17, 2023, and April 19, 2023, respectively.
After closing the day of yesterday with a profit close to $1M, jaredfromsubway.eth MEV bot is already profiting close to $400K today pic.twitter.com/VxouxAc59s
— sealaunch.xyz (@SeaLaunch_) April 19, 2023
A sandwich attack is a technique in which an attacker manipulates prices by inserting their two transactions around a victim’s transaction, allowing them to profit off the user.
The attacker sends two transactions simultaneously: one with a high gas fee to ensure it is included first and another with a lower gas fee to ensure it follows the victim’s transaction. The attacker then profits by buying the victim’s token below the market value, selling it in the same block, and keeping the difference between the transaction’s revenue and gas costs.
The ENS domain “jaredfromsubway.eth” is believed to be a satirical reference to the sandwich chain and its former spokesperson, Jared Fogle. Sealaunch noted that during a 24-hour period between April 18 and 19, 2023, the MEV bot responsible for these sandwich attacks consumed 7% of all Ethereum gas fees, making it the largest gas consumer of the week.
According to Thomas Mattimore, the head of platform at Reserve Protocol, the significant earnings of “jaredfromsubway.eth” were a result of approximately $1.2 million in gas fees paid between April 18, 2023, and 19, 2023.
MEV Blocker has reported that MEV bots have stolen over $1.38 billion from Ethereum users involved in trading, providing liquidity, and minting NFTs. In response, several MEV Block projects have been introduced to protect Ethereum users from sandwich attacks.
Tether Limited, the creator of the popular stablecoin Tether (USDT), had previously taken legal action against an address that defrauded Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) bots of $25 million. At the time, the address held $21 million in additional ERC-20 tokens and approximately $3 million in USDT. Tether Limited has since blacklisted the address.
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