PANews reported on June 17 that according to Cointelegraph, the MEV sandwich robot called "arsc" has stolen about $30 million from Solana users through MEV attacks in the past two months. The MEV sandwich attack refers to the attacker "sandwiching" the victim's transaction between two of his own transactions to manipulate prices and profit from users. They buy the victim's tokens at a price below the market value and then sell them in the same block to make a profit. Ben Coverston, founder of the cryptocurrency company MRGN Research, said on the X platform on June 15 that the "arsc" robot has tried its best to avoid attention while profiting from Solana network users.
It is reported that one of the main wallet addresses used by the "arsc" robot is "9973h...zyWp6", which is said to be mainly used for cold storage and is relatively inactive. According to data from Solana's browser SolanaFM, the wallet holds more than $19 million in funds, including $17 million worth of SOL tokens and $1.1 million worth of USDC, as well as a small number of other tokens. In addition, Coverston also identified another wallet address "Ai4zq...VXKKT" that is active in decentralized financial activities. The wallet is gradually converting SOL to USDC and holds a large position in Kamino and various LSTs. The wallet currently holds more than $9.9 million, most of which are non-SOL tokens. It is worth noting that Coverston believes that "BCbrp...vi58q" is the "main SOL storage address" of "arsc" because it uses dozens of different signers and prompters to perform sandwich attacks. The three wallets hold a total of approximately $29.8 million.
MEV sandwich trading bots use smart algorithms to find and exploit profit opportunities, and this activity is also common on Ethereum. According to MEVBlocker data, as of April 2023, more than $1.38 billion has been wiped out from Ethereum users.
