- Activity and revenues of MEV bots on the Ethereum network have skyrocketed.
- Rewards reach $1 million.
- This comes amid the Curve Finance hack and a sharp outflow of funds from the DeFi sector.
A member of the Ethereum blockchain development team under the pseudonym eric.eth said he has recorded record revenues of MEV bots on the network. This comes amid a hack of one of the largest decentralized exchanges, Curve Finance.
The rewards range from $95,000 to $1.09 million. When asked by a user about what might be causing this, eric.eth responded with the following:
“There are a lot of hacks/exploits on the curve. The bot notices the incoming hack in the mempool, reproduces the transaction, and runs it. To pull something like this off, they pay huge amounts of money in airtime to the blockchain maker.”
Remember, the Curve Finance exchange was hacked on July 31, 2023. The exact amount of damage is still unknown. Various estimates put it as high as $52 million.
The TVL across the DeFi sector fell sharply in the backdrop of the event. The outflow of funds has led to increased activity of MEV bots, which focus on generating revenue by reallocating blocks, according to Cointelegraph.
This type of strategy became particularly popular in the spring of 2023 amid increased activity in speculative markets. In May, we covered a report from analysts at the EigenPhi project on this topic.
According to it, one of the MEV bots called jaredfromsubway earned about $6 million in three months. Transactions involving him were found in 60% of all Ethereum blocks at the time.
At the time, he was the most common Ethereum blockchain.