Over the last few months, a mystery entity on the Ethereum ($ETH) blockchain has captured the interest of the cryptocurrency community when it began producing millions of dollars and using a huge percentage of the network’s gas fees while operating a Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) bot.
According to new research by blockchain data analysis firm EigenPhi, the operator of the MEV bot jaredfromsubway has been exploiting Ethereum blockchain traders since February 27, earning a whopping $40.6 million in revenue and $34.5 million in profit.
According to Dune Analytics, the MEV bot spent around 3,720 ETH or $950,000 in the last two months, completing approximately 180,000 transactions. The MEV bot has caused mayhem for Ethereum traders and has been held responsible for draining millions of dollars from investors. This has alarmed traders, who are becoming increasingly cautious about which tokens to avoid.
It’s worth noting that an MEV bot is designed to exploit Maximal Extractable Value, which is defined as the greatest amount of value that can be extracted from every block on the Ethereum network by changing its content or order. These bots can perform sandwich attacks or take advantage of decentralized exchange arbitrage chances.
A sandwich attack involves the bot executing two transactions around those of another user in order to influence the price of an asset that the user is attempting to trade and profit from the difference in price.
According to EigenPhi, Jaredfromsubway’s bot was found in more than 60% of all Ethereum blocks in the week beginning April 17. According to the business, the entity employed rudimentary arbitrage methods at times, but largely focused on purchasing and selling tokens in its sandwich attacks. According to the investigation, “we looked into how this bot has recently gained a lot of attention and outperformed other sandwich and arbitrage bots.”
Using a variety of altcoins is one of the most important tactics. The bot’s account has many more tokens than the sandwich bot, which comes in second place. According to the firm, utilizing more tokens provides the bot an advantage when it comes to finding sandwich attack opportunities since the more tokens a bot consumes “the more chances it has to execute sandwich transactions.” The bot used approximately 800 different types of tokens at its height.
EigenPhi claims that the bot did not make any meaningful gains until April 17th, when altcoin trading volumes increased dramatically. Not only does the bot carry out these attacks, but it also keeps some cryptocurrency in order to increase its profit.
According to CryptoGlobe, jaredfromsubway recently stunned the cryptocurrency world by returning around $1.5 million in wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) and wrapped Ethereum (WETH) that an individual inadvertently sent it.
