Uniswap liquidity pool user loses over $700,000 after MEV-bot surge, likely due to misconfiguration

The user who created the Uniswap liquidity pool lost over $700,000 in seconds after an influx of MEV-bots, likely caused by a misconfiguration. on-chain data shows this.

It appears the pool owner mixed up values and set the price of the CRV token at $1 (as of writing, it trades at about $0.53).

After adding liquidity in the form of 45 wrapped bitcoins (wBTC) worth about $1.56 million, arbitrage bots almost instantly bought the coins. In exchange, the user received only 1.56 million CRV, which were worth about $850,000.

MEV Bots instantly rushed the pool to swap CRV for valuable WBTC — with the first bot making off with $1.36M in WBTC for only $730K in CRV.

But the bot only netted ~$260, paying $527K of ETH to the validator just to make this transaction.

Tough luck! pic.twitter.com/3JbVwhwYoj

— Arkham (@ArkhamIntel) November 4, 2023

“MEV bots instantly rushed into the pool to swap CRV for valuable WBTC: the first bot walked away with $1.36M in WBTC, swapping them for only $730,000 in CRV. But the bot netted only about $260, having paid the validator $527,000 in ETH. Tough luck, like a drowning man,” — Arkham analysts noted.

Such incidents have recently become not uncommon. On October 11, an unknown user exchanged $131,350 in the de-pegged stablecoin USDR for less than 0.0001 USDC.

On the same day, another MEV bot on BNB Chain earned $1.575 million thanks to an attack costing only $4.16.