Trader loses $2M in Ethereum exploit
- A crypto trader lost about US$2 million after an Ether swap was routed through a low-liquidity pool, resulting in a 99.3% loss.
- Ethereum block builder Titan Builder received about US$1.8 million from the same-block arbitrage transaction.
- Security researchers said traders should carefully review decentralised exchange transaction routes before approving swaps.
A crypto trader lost about US$2 million after swapping Ethereum (CRYPTO:ETH) through a decentralised exchange, where a low-liquidity routing path enabled a same-block arbitrage trade that left the user with tokens worth only about US$14,500.
Blockchain security firm GoPlus Security described the incident as a "textbook case of same-block backrun extraction" rather than a traditional sandwich attack, with the trader exchanging 1,126.44 ETH but receiving only 5,776 Lighter tokens.
“This was a real, highly imbalanced backrunner arbitrage, not a classic sandwich attack,” said GoPlus Security.
GoPlus Security said the swap routed about 1,117 ETH into a low-liquidity AVAIL/WETH pool on Uniswap v3, allowing the 0x router to extract about 1,072 Wrapped Ether before paying approximately 1,018 ETH, worth about US$1.8 million, to Titan Builder as a block builder reward.
Crypto trader Ruslan Khairullin said users should review transaction routes before approving decentralised exchange swaps, and there was no direct market reaction because the incident involved an individual trade rather than a listed company or token announcement.
According to GoPlus Security, the AVAIL tokens acquired during the trade were later exchanged for about US$14,200 worth of Lighter tokens, resulting in a loss of approximately 99.3% of the original transaction value.
Data from DefiLlama showed Titan Builder has generated about US$112.6 million in block-building revenue this year, including about US$34 million from an arbitrage opportunity involving a MEV bot incident on CoW Protocol in March.
At the time of reporting, Ethereum price was $1,769.30.
