"Even Buterin was hit"...MEV bot sandwich attack, what is it?

▲ Hacking. Cryptocurrency transaction/ChatGPT generated image

Even the founder of Ethereum (ETH) has fallen victim to an MEV bot. The market is paying more attention to Ethereum's cold structure, where no one receives special treatment, rather than the fact that Vitalik Buterin's transaction was hit by a sandwich attack.

According to the cryptocurrency specialized media U.Today on May 7 (local time), a sandwich attack, one of Ethereum's old trading strategies, recently targeted a transaction by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin. The incident occurred a few days ago but was buried in the flood of transactions and did not receive much attention from the market.

The problematic transaction showed a typical structure of a Maximum Extractable Value (MEV) attack. The bot placed transactions immediately before and after Buterin's swap transaction to profit from the price fluctuations created by his trade. U.Today described it as "the most Ethereum-like thing imaginable" given that even the Ethereum founder became a target of an MEV bot.

A sandwich attack works by a bot monitoring the mempool, the waiting area for Ethereum transactions. When a large swap transaction appears, the bot first buys, then the victim's transaction pushes up the price, and immediately after, the bot sells at a higher price. Ultimately, the bot takes the profit, and the victim receives an unfavorable execution price.

'Jared from Subway', who appeared in this attack, is not a real person but a famous MEV identity associated with Ethereum sandwich attacks. This wallet is frequently caught around front-running activities and has become a meme within the community over time.

MEV systems are mostly automated and do not distinguish whether a trader is a regular user, a whale investor, or an Ethereum co-founder. Public transaction visibility creates an environment where sophisticated participants can extract value before a regular user's transaction is confirmed. Developers are looking for solutions through private mempools, encrypted transaction flows, and MEV mitigation systems, but this issue remains deeply embedded in how Ethereum operates today.

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