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An unidentified Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) bot operator has profited significantly, exceeding $1 million this week by performing “sandwich attacks” on buyers and sellers of two emerging meme coins.
The wallet address associated with the Ethereum Name Service (ENS) domain “jaredfromsubway.eth” generated $950,000 from these sandwich attacks on April 18, and earned approximately $300,000 and $400,000 on April 17 and 19, respectively, as reported in an April 19 tweet by the nonfungible token (NFT) data platform Sealaunch.
After concluding yesterday with a profit nearing $1M, the jaredfromsubway.eth MEV bot is already nearing $400K in profits today pic.twitter.com/VxouxAc59s
— sealaunch.xyz (@SeaLaunch_) April 19, 2023
The bot’s ENS domain appears to be a humorous reference to the well-known sandwich franchise and its controversial former spokesperson Jared Fogle.
During a 24-hour span from April 18 to 19, the MEV bot accounted for 7% of all Ethereum gas fees, as explained by Sealaunch in a separate update.
A significant portion of the earnings stemmed from attacks on trading activities related to two new meme coins, Pepe (PEPE) and Wojak (WOJAK), which has led jaredfromsubway.eth to become the top gas consumer over the past day and week, according to crypto researcher Matt Willemsen:
Wondering why gas is so high?
jaredfromsubway.eth (lmao) is absolutely profiting by sandwich-attacking $PEPE and $WOJAK trading activities. They are the #1 gas spender over the last day and week.
MEV sandwich bots on Ethereum have generated over $100M since the weekend. https://t.co/qhxyxlac20— Matt Willemsen (@matt_willemsen) April 19, 2023
A sandwich attack involves an attacker “sandwiching” a victim’s transaction between their own two transactions to manipulate the price and gain profit from the user.
This tactic is feasible because the victim’s transaction is initially sent to the mempool, where it remains until it is included in the next block. Meanwhile, the attacker submits one transaction with a high gas fee to ensure it is processed first, followed by another transaction with a lower gas fee to guarantee it is processed after the victim’s transaction.
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The attacker benefits by acquiring the victim’s token at a price lower than the market rate, then selling it within the same block—capturing the difference between the transaction revenue and the gas fees.
The substantial profits amassed by jaredfromsubway.eth resulted from nearly $1.2 million spent on gas fees between April 18 and 19, according to data provided by Thomas Mattimore, the head of platform at the Reserve Protocol.
The MEV bot operator has incurred over $7 million in gas fees across 180,000 transactions, as reported by Sealaunch.
While some find amusement in the MEV bot’s domain name and activities, not everyone shares this sentiment.
Related: Tether blacklists validator address that drained MEV bots for $25M
One analyst from the on-chain analytics firm Glassnode questioned the “value” of the contributions made by jaredfromsubway.eth to the ecosystem.
Other Twitter users expressed their disdain and frustration towards the MEV bot operator.
when i see jaredfromsubway.eth on the shitcoin i just aped my entire networth into pic.twitter.com/heK4bnbikf
— DRT (@pepeDRT) April 19, 2023
According to MEV Blocker, MEV bots have extracted over $1.38 billion from Ethereum users engaged in trading, providing liquidity, and minting NFTs.
Several MEV Block initiatives have been introduced in recent months to assist in safeguarding Ethereum users from sandwich attacks.
Magazine: Magazine:‘Account abstraction’ supercharges Ethereum wallets: Dummies guide
