In the world of cryptocurrency, a Solana-based maximal extractible value (MEV) bot, dubbed “arsc,” has generated approximately $30 million in the past two months by engaging in sandwich attacks. These attacks involve the bot strategically positioning its own transactions around a victim’s transaction to manipulate the price and profit from selling the victim’s token at a higher market value.
The bot’s operator kept a low profile while accumulating these sizable profits from users of the Solana network, says Ben Coverston, founder of MRGN Research. In addition, the operator is believed to be using a dormant wallet address for cold-storage purposes, holding an estimated $19 million in assets, primarily in Solana tokens and Circle’s USD Coin.
Coverston also identified another wallet address linked to the bot, which is considerably more active in decentralized finance activities and currently holds over $9.9 million. Another wallet address, assumed to be the bot’s “main SOL bank,” is used to execute the sandwich attacks.
Combining the assets in these three wallets yields an estimated total of $29.8 million. While MEV sandwich bots can often present lucrative opportunities, they have extracted over $1.38 billion from Ethereum users as of April 2023, according to MEVBlocker, highlighting a potentially darker side to these forms of cryptocurrency trading activity.