Vitalik's Small Token Swap Targeted by $1.14M MEV Bot Attack

ME News reports that on May 8 (UTC+8), the bot "JaredfromSubway" successfully executed an attack on a small token swap by Vitalik. Vitalik intended to exchange 26,544 XDB tokens, worth approximately $3.86, for about $4.56 in ETH. However, the bot conducted large-volume trades between liquidity pools on SushiSwap and Uniswap V2 using roughly $1.14 million in WETH, manipulating the XDB price and significantly increasing the slippage on Vitalik’s transaction. The entire MEV attack involved approximately $1 million in trading volume, resulting in only a few cents in losses for Vitalik; after deducting $5.14 in gas fees, the bot incurred a minor loss. Ironically, Vitalik has long publicly opposed "toxic MEV" and has strongly advocated for encrypted mempools as a solution in Ethereum’s 2026 roadmap. MEV has collectively extracted over $1.2 billion in user value, with sandwich attacks accounting for 51%—essentially imposing an invisible tax on ordinary users by exploiting the public mempool. The bot JaredfromSubway, known since 2023 for sandwiching meme coin trades, once accounted for 7% of all Ethereum chain gas fees and has accumulated over $7 million in profits; this time, even Vitalik was not spared. (Source: BlockBeats)