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06/21 07:40
Ethereum’s top sandwich bot hit for $7.5M in a counter-MEV trap
Early analysis suggests the drain may have occurred through a sophisticated counter-MEV strategy designed to exploit the bot’s own automated trading logic.
Blockchain security firm Blockaid reported: ‘Blockaid Exploit Detection system detected an exploit involving the MEV bot on Ethereum. The incident resulted from attacker-controlled contracts tricking an automated MEV execution system into granting token approvals, later used to drain funds.”
The incident marks a rare setback for JaredFromSubway, the sandwich bot that rose to prominence by exploiting decentralized exchange traders through front-running and back-running transactions. Blockaid says attackers made fake tokens and pools
Blockaid says attackers made fake tokens and pools
In another post, Blockaid noted that the engineered exploit differed from traditional phishing attacks and was not necessarily caused by a weakness in the smart contract itself. The scheme targeted the bot’s trading logic, causing it to interpret fake opportunities as profitable and to authorize contracts under the attackers’ control.
The attackers had completely fabricated an ecosystem of 66 fake tokens and pools, including those of Wrapped ETH (WETH), USDC (USDC), and USDt (USDT), and then paired that with CAP tokens. The fakes mimicked the MEV indicators the bot was optimized to detect, triggering its automated approval protocols for attacker-controlled contracts.
Blockaid chief technology officer Raz Niv stated, “Ironically, in the process, it provided the attacker the keys to millions in the bot’s treasury.” The bot lost $7.5 million according to Etherscan data.
So far, blockchain data suggests the attackers have already sent some of the stolen funds to Tornado Cash.
Speaking on the exploit, crypto investor and commentator David Gokhshtein asserted, “We shouldn’t be happy about this; no one should celebrate … but if you’ve ever been sandwiched by this … I’m pretty sure you’re not upset about this news.”
Is Jaredfromsubway.eth aggressively notorious for making traders lose to sandwich attacks?
An earlier analysis by research showed that Ethereum traders collectively lose about $60 million a year to sandwich attacks. Ethereum network telemetry recorded an average monthly volume of 60,000 to 90,000 sandwich attacks from November 2024 to October 2025, with Jaredfromsubway.eth executing a dominant 70% share.
In May, Jaredfromsubway.eth targeted a transaction by Vitalik Buterin involving 26,544 DigitalBits. The amount lost was insignificant, but the event demonstrated that MEV bots are willing to pursue even tiny profit opportunities. Etherscan records show the founder was sandwiched by the bot in block 24993038.
Before Buterin’s swap went through, the bot had routed about $1.14 million in WETH through SushiSwap and Uniswap V2 to manipulate XDB’s price across both liquidity pools.
Previously, EigenPhi had cautioned that slippage in crypto transactions creates an opportunity for Jared to push prices up, making traders pay more and allowing him to profit from the difference.
The MEV tracking site wrote, “Jared 2.0 would use adding liquidity transactions as the front piece and/or the centerpiece and removing liquidity transactions as the back piece. The combination can be various, putting several transactions in between, becoming sandwich attack victims.”
As of May, MEV extraction on Ethereum had grown to over $1.2 billion, with sandwich attacks accounting for about 51% of the total volume. Buterin has been advocating for encrypted mempools over the past few months as part of efforts to address harmful MEV practices in Ethereum’s future roadmap.
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