Crypto Trader Loses $215K in MEV Sandwich Attack

A crypto trader mislaid much than $215,000 connected March 12 successful a sandwich onslaught portion swapping stablecoins. The incidental happened connected Uniswap v3’s USDC-USDT liquidity pool, erstwhile again exposing however Maximum Extractable Value (MEV) bots instrumentality vantage of traders successful decentralized concern (DeFi).

The trader wanted to speech $220,764 successful USD Coin (USDC) for Tether (USDT), but wrong conscionable 8 seconds, a bot interfered and messed up the trade. As a result, they ended up with lone $5,271 successful USDT—losing astir 98% of their money.  

Data from an Ethereum artifact explorer reveals that a MEV onslaught targeted Uniswap v3’s USDC-USDT liquidity pool, which holds $19.8 cardinal successful locked value.

MEV bots enactment similar high-frequency traders, looking for ways to nett from blockchain transactions. In this case, the bot temporarily pulled each the USDC liquidity from Uniswap v3’s USDC-USDT pool, past enactment it backmost close aft the trader’s swap went through. This instrumentality led to a unspeakable speech rate, causing the immense loss. This instrumentality led to a unspeakable speech rate, causing the immense loss. 

According to Michael Nadeau, laminitis of The DeFi Report, the attacker paid Ethereum artifact builder “bob-the-builder.eth” a $200,000 extremity from the full magnitude portion keeping $8,000 arsenic profit.

DeFi researcher “DeFiac” believes the aforesaid trader, utilizing antithetic wallets, mightiness person fallen unfortunate to six akin sandwich attacks successful a azygous day. Two wallets—“0xDDe…42a6D” and “0x999…1D215”—were besides hit, losing $138,838 and $128,003, respectively.

Some speculate these unusual swaps could beryllium an effort to launder money. DefiLlama developer 0xngmi suggested that atrocious trades similar this mightiness beryllium intentional, utilized to cleanable illicit funds by sending transactions privately to an MEV bot.

Initially, immoderate blamed Uniswap, but CEO Hayden Adams clarified that these transactions didn’t hap done Uniswap’s authoritative interface, which has MEV extortion and slippage settings to assistance forestall specified attacks.

This isn’t the archetypal clip thing similar this has happened. A portion back, a trader enactment successful $732,000 for a swap and walked distant with conscionable $19,000 due to the fact that of a akin trick.

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