A Uniswap V3 user lost over $700,000 in just 12 seconds due to an unfortunate mistake and the quick action of MEV bots. The user appears to have entered an incorrect value while trying to create a liquidity pool, resulting in a significant loss.
The user appears to have confused the value of the altcoin Curve DAO Token (CRV) with USD while adding $1.56 million worth of Wrapped Bitcoin to the liquidity pool. As a result, by giving $1.56 million worth of BTC, this user received 1.56 million CRV, which was worth only $850,000 in those minutes.
So what are the MEV boats causing the loss?
MEV bots, namely Maximal Extractable Value bots, can be defined as software tools developed to follow the Ethereum blockchain, identify profitable opportunities and automatically perform these transactions for their users. In transactions on decentralized cryptocurrency exchanges, they make profits by first making transactions themselves, that is, by sandwiching in crypto parlance.
In this case, MEV bots quickly stepped in to take advantage of the arbitrage opportunity presented by the user's error. But the most successful bot made a total profit of just $260 after paying $527,000 in “bribes” to validators to “get ahead” of other bots and execute its transaction first.
*This is not investment advice.