Maximal extractable value (MEV) refers to the economic value that block builders divert from users through the manipulation of transaction ordering. The most harmful type of MEV involves sandwich attacks, where an attacker simultaneously frontruns and backruns a victim’s swaps. This practice results in the victim receiving a suboptimal execution price, while the attacker profits from the spread. MEV activity is most prevalent on Ethereum due to its high transaction volume on decentralized exchanges (DEXs) and an open block-building market that exposes order flow to searchers.
This article presents insights into sandwiching activity from November 2024 to October 2025, drawing on a dataset of over 95,000 sandwich attacks exclusively provided by the data platform EigenPhi.
Our research indicates that despite a slowdown in sandwich extraction, the risk to ordinary users persists. While these attacks result in approximately $60 million in annual losses for traders, block builders capture the majority of this value through gas fees. Attackers are left with a profit margin of only about 5%. Alarmingly, nearly 40% of all sandwich attacks occur in low-volatility pools, meaning traders can experience significant slippage even on swaps that are typically considered safe. Nevertheless, the decline in extraction might also suggest an increasing adoption of MEV-protection tools by traders.
However, the issue remains largely unresolved due to the absence of a unified mechanism to protect user swaps from sandwiching. There is a growing discussion about introducing native MEV protection at the Ethereum protocol level. Previous analyses have explored technical innovations aimed at this, such as Shutter’s threshold encryption and Batched Threshold Encryption.
State of Sandwiching on Ethereum in 2025
Sandwich extraction experienced a sharp decline in 2025, even as monthly DEX volumes rose from around $65 billion in the first quarter to over $100 billion by the third quarter. Monthly extraction from sandwich attacks decreased from nearly $10 million in late 2024 to approximately $2.5 million by October 2025.
The net profits, after accounting for gas costs, from sandwich activity averaged about $260,000 per month in 2025. It is important to note that this figure was inflated by a single outlier in January 2025, when one sandwich attack generated more than $800,000 in profit.
Despite the drop in extraction value, the number of attacks remained high, consistently ranging between 60,000 and 90,000 per month throughout the period. Approximately 70% of all sandwich attacks are associated with a single entity known as Jared (jaredfromsubway.eth), one of the most prominent MEV searchers. Jared’s v2 bot recently adopted a sophisticated strategy capable of targeting up to four victims simultaneously. This bot sometimes places a transaction in the middle of the front-run and back-run to further manipulate swap rates for subsequent victims. Jared can also influence prices by adding or removing liquidity from pools.
Targeted Trading Pairs in Sandwich Attacks
Data reveals that about 38% of attacks targeted low-volatility pools, which include stablecoins, wrapped assets, and liquid staking tokens (LSTs) of Ether and Bitcoin. Notably, around 12% of all sandwich attacks occurred in stable swaps, leading to slippage risks in areas where it is least expected and particularly damaging. Outside of stablecoins and wrapped assets, the most actively traded token pair targeted was the memecoin MANYU paired with WETH. Jared has consistently targeted this pool since July, extracting nearly $19,000 across 65 sandwich attacks.
Quantity Over Profitability for MEV Bots
The sandwich bot niche is highly competitive, and with declining profits, fewer bots have remained active. In October 2025, a total of 515 distinct bots operated on Ethereum; however, only slightly over 100 distinct sandwich bots executed trades in a typical month.
The average profit per sandwich attack remains extremely low, at just over $3. Only six attackers generated more than $10,000 in total profit, illustrating how narrow the path to consistent returns has become in this space. Approximately one-third of all active sandwich bots in 2025 operated near breakeven (between -$10 and $10), while roughly 30% recorded net losses. Bots often incur losses due to intense competition for limited opportunities, miscalculated slippage, and gas costs, with margins too thin to absorb these errors.
The data suggests that Jared’s strategy has been the most profitable to date. This strategy prioritizes quantity, capturing most available sandwich opportunities, including smaller ones that often yield profits of only a few cents. Throughout most of 2025, gas costs remained low relative to per-attack revenue, making this model more viable than before. Nevertheless, Jared still experiences losses at times. In April 2025, its profit margin was negative 20%, resulting in a loss of approximately $12,000.
