Subway-themed trading bot makes millions using ‘sandwich’ attacks
An anonymous Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) bot operator has cashed in well over $1 million this week by executing “sandwich attacks” against buyers and sellers of two new meme coins.
The wallet address, linked to the Ethereum Name Service (ENS) domain “jaredfromsubway.eth” made $950,000 from the sandwich attacks on April 18 and profited about $300,000 and $400,000 on April 17 and 19 respectively according to an April 19 tweet from nonfungible token (NFT) data platform Sealaunch.
After closing the day of yesterday with a profit close to $1M, jaredfromsubway.eth MEV bot is already profiting close to $400K today pic.twitter.com/VxouxAc59s
The bot's ENS domain is a likely tongue-in-cheek nod to the popular sandwich chain and its disgraced former spokesperson Jared Fogle.
Over a 24-hour period between April 18 to 19, 7% of all Ethereum gas fees were spent by the MEV bot, Sealaunch explained in a separate post.
A large proportion of the profits came from attacks on trading activity relating to two new meme coins, Pepe (PEPE) and Wojak (WOJAK), which has helped propel jaredfromsubway.eth to the become the largest gas guzzler over the last day and week, crypto researcher Matt Willemsen explained:
Wondering why gas is so damn high? jaredfromsubway.eth (lmao) is absolutely cleaning up by sandwich-attacking $PEPE and $WOJAK trading activity. They are #1 gas spender over the past day and week.MEV sandwich bots on Ethereum have made $100M+ since the weekend. https://t.co/qhxyxlac20
A sandwich attack occurs when an attacker "sandwiches" a victim's transaction between their own two transactions in order to manipulate the price and profit from the user.
This is possible because the victim's transaction is first sent to the mempool where it
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