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The sandwich attack, one of Ethereum's oldest and most notorious trading strategies, recently targeted Vitalik Buterin. When users noticed that Jared from Subway had successfully sandwiched one of Vitalik's transactions, however the incident that took place a few days ago was burried under the barrage of transactions.
What happened with Vitalik's transaction?
With a bot placing trades right before and after Buterin's swap to profit from price movement brought on by his own transaction, the transaction in question demonstrated the well-known MEV pattern. The irony effect is certailny there. It seems like the most Ethereum thing imaginable that an MEV bot attacked Ethereum's founder.
A sandwich attack is a type of MEV, or maximum extractable value, for those who are not familiar with cryptocurrency trading. It occurs when bots keep an eye on the mempool, which is essentially Ethereum's transaction waiting area. Bots scramble to place a trade before it executes and then sell right away when a big swap shows up.
This is how the order appears
- The bot makes the first purchase.
- The price is moved by the victim's transaction.
- The bot sells at the higher price.
- In the end, the bot keeps the difference while the victim receives a worse execution.
In this case, that is what occurred. Jared from Subway is a well-known MEV identity linked to Ethereum sandwich attacks rather than a real person. Because the wallet frequently appears around front-running activity, the name became a common joke in the community. It developed into a meme over time.
MEV systems are mostly uncaring and automated. Bots do not care whether the trader is a random user, a whale, or Ethereum's own co-founder. The bots try to take advantage of opportunities created by transactions.
Before trades are finalized, sophisticated actors can extract value from regular users thanks to public transaction visibility. Although the problem is still deeply ingrained in how Ethereum functions today, builders are still working on solutions through private mempools, encrypted transaction flows, and MEV reduction systems.
Strangely, Vitalik's sandwiching almost confirms the neutrality of the system. He was handled the same way by MEV bots as everyone else and had no additional protection (and most likely never will).
Dan Burgin
U.Today Editorial Team
