MEV Bot Mishap: $400k Lost in Erroneous Transaction

A maximal extractable value (MEV) sniping bot malfunctioned a few hours ago, resulting in the loss of more than $400,000 for users who sent funds to it.

Blockchain analytics firm Arkham Intelligence reported that several users of an Alpha group sent 160 ETH to the bot to snipe the launch of Poo Finance tokens.

MEV Bot Mishap

These users paid 80 ETH in bribes to gain priority access to be included in the first block transaction.

This means they committed 240 ETH, worth $440,000, to snipe the Poo Finance tokens.

MEV Bot Transactions (Source: Arkham Intelligence)

MEV Bot Targeted Wrong Pool

However, the bot did not function as intended, sending the 160 ETH to the wrong Uniswap V3 pool. Arkham said the bot sent these funds after detecting an ‘add liquidity’ transaction from the developer.

While the Poo Finance developer added 40 ETH liquidity to the main pool, the buy transaction from the bot targeted a smaller pool with fewer token supplies.

Usually, transactions are organized by transaction fees, prioritizing those paying higher fees. An MEV bot can access this transaction data to extract the most profit by running an arbitrage or front-running the transactions.

This means the 80 ETH bribe resulted in the MEV bot purchasing 4 ETH worth of the Poo Finance tokens.

MEV Bot Transactions (Source: Arkham Intelligence)

What further worsened the situation was that all the 160 ETH was transferred to the Uniswap router. Due to the function used for this token swap, the excess ETH was not refunded.

Another Bot Swept Excess The ETH on Uniswap

Another bot, 0x9dd, swept the excess ETH from the Uniswap router. The bot paid 0.43 ETH worth around $800 ETH to claim the extra $196,000 in the router.

Meanwhile, the original bot holds over 6 billion POO tokens worth about 3 ETH after spending more than $400,000.

The biggest winners from these transactions were the validators incentivized to prioritize them.

Meanwhile, an MEV bot Jaredfromthesubway.eth, made millions through sandwich attacks and arbitrage opportunities earlier in the year. On April 19, the bot spent over $1 million in gas fees to profit from several memecoins trades.

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