Lucky Break: Mistaken Sender Sees Notorious MEV Bot Return $1.5 Million in Crypto

An individual has recently unintentionally sent more than $1.5 million worth of wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) and wrapped Ethereum ((WETH), two ERC-20 tokens representing the largest digital assets by market capitalization, to a high-frequency, Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) bot notorious for plaguing traders on the Ethereum network called jaredfromsubway.eth.

The erroneous transaction was first reported on the microblogging platform Twitter by users who spotted the sender’s appeal to the bot to receive the funds back. Jaredfromsubway.eth has been accused of sandwiching traders and contributing to the escalation of ETH gas fees. In the last 24 hours, it has allegedly consumed over 7% of gas fees.

Data from Dune Analytics shows that the MEV bot, expended about 3,720 ETH or $950,000 in the past two months, executing roughly 180,000 transactions. On April 17, the bot’s profit reached $250,000, which soared to approximately $400,000 two days later on April 19.

The MEV bot has been wreaking havoc for Ethereum traders and has been held accountable for draining millions from investors. This has raised alarm among traders, who are increasingly concerned about which tokens to avoid.

An MEV bot, it’s worth noting, is made to take advantage of Maximal Extractable Value, which is seen as the maximum amount of value that can be extracted from every block on the Ethereum network by influencing its content or order. These bots can, for example, take advantage of decentralized exchange arbitrage opportunities, or execute sandwich attacks.

A sandwich attack sees the bot execute two transactions around those of another user to manipulate the price of an asset that the user is trying to trade and make a profit off of the price difference.

Despite the user’s mistake in sending $1.5 million to the bot, its operator actually sent the funds back to the user in a surprising twist.

The emergence of MEV bots, however, has become a pressing issue in the cryptocurrency world, as some of these bots are reportedly exploiting vulnerabilities for profit, even at the expense of other users on the network.

The size of these bots has grown to astounding numbers, with crypto reporter Wu Blockchain noting that in a single day these bots made over $1.035 million in profit over 11,640 transactions. These profits included $940,000 in sandwich attacks.

Notably, several other events have been capturing the attention of cryptocurrency traders. As CryptoGlobe reported, crypto enthusiasts have been rewarded with a five-figure airdrop that capture the community’s attention, after pasting their wallet addresses on a Twitter post.

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