Solana-based MEV bot earns $1.8 million after back-running memecoin trader in seconds

by Vishal Chawla

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The Block Illustration by Zoe Ellyse Del Rosario for The Block

Quick Take

A MEV arbitrage bot operator earned $1.8 million using a back-running strategy targeting dogwifhat (WIF) trades.
The bot, operated by 2Fast, turned 703 SOL (about $70,000) into 19,035 SOL (roughly $1.9 million).

A MEV arbitrage bot operator earned a profit of $1.8 million from a single transaction bundle on the Solana network.

The bot, operated by 2Fast, converted 703 SOL (worth around $70,000) into 19,035 SOL (approximately $1.9 million) in a matter of 20 seconds. A portion of the profit, 890 SOL, was given to Figment, a network validator, as a tip. This was first noted by an X user @norbertbodziony.

The profit was obtained through a MEV strategy targeting trades of the meme coin dogwifhat (WIF) yesterday. The move led to substantial gains for 2Fast.

The MEV was captured via the execution tool, developed by Jito Labs, that allows searchers to find MEV and bid for transaction bundle inclusion on Solana — similar to Ethereum’s Flashbots.

A trader, caught in an unfavorable transaction, inadvertently spent close to $9 million to acquire dogwifhat (WIF) due to mistakenly placing an order in a low-liquidity pool. The error led to purchasing the memecoin at $3 per unit, several times higher than its market rate of $0.2 at the time.

Back-running

This resulted in a back-running opportunity for MEV operators who quickly made moves to capitalize on the opportunity. Back-running is a specific type of MEV strategy that involves capitalizing on the temporary price movements caused by another transaction.

Back-running bots constantly monitor the mempool, which is a holding area for unconfirmed transactions on the blockchain. These bots look fortransactions and prepare their own transactions to follow. 2Fast alone made nearly $1.8 million, but on-chain data shows that other bots also got a piece of the cake.

MEV was made possible on Solana after Jito Labs developed the Jito Block Engine, an off-chain blockspace auction system where traders can submit transaction bundles along with a bid for their inclusion in the blockchain. This mechanism is intended to enhance the reliability of transaction execution on the Solana network.

SOL earned from MEV tips go to validators running the Jito client on Solana.

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