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Since this new contract went live, it has processed over 85,000 transactions, generating about 765 ETH, which is close to $2 million at current market prices.
The “jaredfromsubway.eth” MEV bot, infamous for its previous exploits is back with new and improved tactics.
This bot, which made headlines in early 2023 for making millions through “sandwich” attacks and arbitrage, has now returned with more advanced strategies to target decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms.
A More Dangerous Version
On August 20, EigenPhi reported that a new contract linked to the jaredfromsubway.eth bot had appeared. This contract is being used to carry out more complex sandwich attacks. In these attacks, the bot places its transactions both before and after a target’s trade, manipulating prices to earn a profit. The latest version of the bot is even more sophisticated, executing multiple transactions in the same block to increase its gains.
The bot mainly focuses on Uniswap V3 pools, where it manipulates exchange rates to take advantage of regular traders. What makes this version more dangerous is its ability to add and remove liquidity as part of the attack. This tactic makes it harder for others to track or predict what the bot is doing, making it a bigger threat in the DeFi space.
Previously, this bot had already earned millions of dollars by using similar methods. The new contract, created with the same key pair as the original bot, confirms that the person behind jaredfromsubway.eth is still active and has made their operation even more powerful.
Since this new contract went live, it has processed over 85,000 transactions, generating about 765 ETH, which is close to $2 million at current market prices. After a slowdown in early August, the bot’s activity has surged, causing significant disruptions in the DeFi market.
The bot’s aggressive activities of have been implicated in greatly increasing gas fees on the Ethereum network. Gas fees, which users pay to have their transactions processed by validators, have spiked as the bot competes to prioritize its transactions by offering higher fees.
Reports indicate that at one point, the bot was responsible for paying around 142 ETH in gas fees daily, surpassing even major entities like Coinbase in fee contributions. This surge in gas fees worsens existing scalability issues on Ethereum, making transactions more expensive and less accessible for regular users.
The Growing Risk of MEV Bots
Sandwich attacks have surged to over $17 billion in volume in the past month alone, raising concerns from traders and developers in the DeFi space. While Ethereum continues to grapple with the challenges posed by MEV bots, other networks like Solana are adopting different approaches to address the issue.
Solana, for instance, subsidizes most of its validators to discourage MEV activities by reducing the financial incentives for such exploits. However, this strategy still faces some criticisms, as some argue that it merely offers temporary relief and does not fully eliminate the problem. Instances have been reported where even subsidized validators participated in facilitating sandwich attacks, indicating that more comprehensive solutions may be necessary.
