The bot borrowed $11.97 million Wrapped Ether (Wether) to start a “sandwich” attack on someone seeking to swap about $5,000 worth of Shuffle (SHFL). Even though 14 transactions were set up across distributed finance (DeFi) networks like Aave and Uniswap, the bot barely generated a profit after gas taxes were eliminated.

Etherscan says the whole attack lasted one block, or twelve seconds. Using two transactions—one before and one after—a sandwich attack seeks to manipulate the token price and profit from the difference, therefore affecting a victim’s transaction.

In this case, the MEV bot borrowed large sums, executed the sandwich attack, and paid back its loans, therefore earned only $20. Usually, the approach allows the attacker to financially sell tokens inside the same block after acquiring them at a lower pricing. Given high gas pricing and the complexity of the trades, the rewards for this bot were small nonetheless.

Although this initiative was not particularly effective, historically MEV bots have made operators fairly wealthy. Particularly in April 2023, the infamous bot operator jaredfrom Subway earned over $1 million in a week with sandwich attacks on PEPE and WOJAK memecoin exchanges. The operator mentions tongue-in-cheekingly the Subway sandwich company and past spokesperson Jared Fogle.

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