JaredFromSubway.eth sandwich attacked Vitalik Buterin

MEV-focused extraction bot JaredFromSubway.eth front- and back-ran an Ethereum trade by Vitalik Buterin, getting away with about two-thousandths of an ether (ETH).

Ethereum founder Buterin was selling a token airdrop, DigitalBits, when he fell victim to the garden-variety sandwich attack.

The name “JaredFromSubway” refers to Jared Fogle who lost nearly 250 pounds while earning a TV sponsorship from Subway. After his weight loss fame faded, however, the world learned of Fogle’s sexual misconduct involving minors, including a criminal conviction.

He remains imprisoned with an expected release date of 2029.

Crypto, of course, has a dark sense of humor, and despite his legal troubles, someone decided to name a maximum extractable value (MEV)-focused extraction bot after him. Fogle, who has limited internet access in prison, doesn’t control the bot.

The trader bearing an ENS name with Fogle’s brand extracted value from Buterin’s transaction inside Ethereum block 24993038.

Read more: Your L2 transaction fees are higher because of MEV spam, report

Another sandwich attack by JaredFromSubway.eth

Buterin routed 26,544 DigitalBits (XDB) tokens through the Uniswap V2 router with his slippage parameter amountOutMin set to zero. That setting accepted any non-zero output.

Buterin received 0.00197 ETH, worth a little under $5 at the time.

JaredFromSubway.eth, watching the public mempool, noticed Buterin’s unprotected swap and inserted itself onto both sides of his transaction.

In the position immediately before Buterin, the bot dumped a pile of XDB into the same Uniswap V2 pool. That depressed the exchange rate Buterin would receive.

In the position immediately after, it bought XDB back at the depressed price and rotated the inventory through a third liquidity pool to close the loop.

After gas fees, Jared gained nothing except the satisfaction of making a priceless joke at Buterin’s expense.

The punchline is that a sandwich bot on Ethereum — named after the world’s most famous sandwich spokesperson — still tricked a careless Buterin out of fees on his own blockchain.

Read more: Vitalik Buterin’s $1B crypto donation to India will be worth just $400M

Buterin suffered the sandwich attack because his swap order carelessly accepted any output. Setting amountOutMin to zero was Uniswap’s maximally permissive setting.

In essence, Buterin told his order router to fill his trade no matter how badly the price moved based on his supply.

MEV bots scanning Ethereum’s mempool salivate for exactly that type of laziness.

Buterin has a habit of dumping unsolicited airdrops and donating the proceeds.

Because almost all of his personal net worth derives from his pre-mined allocation of ETH, he’s happy to donate extra coins that he receives. In this case, his donation went to an unintended recipient.

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