MEV Bot Borrows $12 Million, Nets Just $20

An “unfortunate” MEV bot took out a flash loan of $11.7 million but managed to earn only $20 from the transaction. Analysts at Arkham Intelligence highlighted this incident.

An MEV Bot just took out a $12 Million flashloan to make less than $20 in profit.

It sandwiched a user trying to swap $5K of SHFL to WETH using around 2% slippage.

Unlucky. pic.twitter.com/I1llVBN4fH

— Arkham (@ArkhamIntel) September 5, 2024

The automated software executed a “sandwich attack” on a user attempting to swap $5000 worth of Shuffle (SHFL) tokens for Wrapped ETH (WETH). The slippage on the transaction was approximately 2%.

In total, the bot conducted 14 transactions, utilizing DeFi protocols Balancer, Aave, and Uniswap. After completing the operations and paying for gas, the profit amounted to just over $20.

“Unlucky,” noted Arkham.

Commenters wryly observed that in the current market, even an MEV bot struggles to earn more than $20.

$20 pure profit is more than most are making in this market

— John (@j0hn1x) September 5, 2024

A “sandwich attack” is a market manipulation technique. The perpetrator surrounds a user’s transaction with two of their own, affecting asset prices to extract profit. These operations must be conducted within a single block, often using a private mempool created with validators.

In July, the Solana Foundation expelled a group of node operators from its delegation program for participating in “sandwich attacks.”

Back in June, on-chain analyst Ben discovered that a well-known MEV bot on the Solana network earned around $30 million from similar activities over two months.