No Place to Hide: An Analysis on Protected Order Flow Sandwich Attacks
Study finds millions of sandwich attacks against supposedly protected order flow across six blockchains.
A three-year measurement study analyzes sandwich attacks against protected order flow on Ethereum, Solana, Tron, Base, Arbitrum, and Monad. It reports 28.0 million attacks on Solana, 38,567 on Tron, 30,607 on Ethereum, and 1,889 on Base, plus 2,875 further Ethereum victims exposed by reorganized blocks. Unlike public-mempool sandwiches, these rarely sit tightly around victims and, outside Solana, come from few entities. Cited exposures include Solana validator and application leaks, Ethereum order-flow auctions and reorgs, Tron latency front-running, and a Base RPC bug with predictable victim behavior.
- Three-year study of sandwich attacks on protected order flow across six chains.
- Solana had 28 million attacks; Ethereum 30,607 plus 2,875 reorg victims.
- Failures include validators, auctions, reorgs, ordering, and a Base RPC bug.
- Outside Solana, a small number of entities carried out the attacks.
From the original article
1 min read at arxiv.orgFront-running has long plagued Ethereum's public mempool, earning it the nickname of a "dark forest", where predators lurk for profitable transactions. In response, Ethereum and other blockchain ecosystems increasingly rely on private RPCs and native protections to shield transactions from adversaries, which we refer to as protected order flow.
By Lioba Heimbach · arxiv.org
A short excerpt; the article and its images belong to the publisher. Summary, key facts and assessment above are AI-written from the article and can be wrong.