In a remarkable display of Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) strategy, a bot operator known as 2Fast has raked in an impressive $1.8 million profit from a single transaction bundle on the Solana (SOL) blockchain. Managing to turn an initial investment of 703 SOL (approximately $70,000) into a staggering 19,035 SOL (equivalent to around $1.9 million) in just 20 seconds, 2Fast executed a carefully planned MEV strategy targeting the meme coin dogwifhat (WIF). The MEV execution tool used for this exploit was developed by Jito Labs, offering users the ability to identify MEV opportunities and bid for transaction bundle inclusion on Solana, similar to Ethereum’s Flashbots.
This lucrative windfall was triggered by a trader’s costly mistake, where the trader inadvertently spent nearly $9 million to acquire dogwifhat (WIF) by placing an order in a low-liquidity pool. The error created a back-running opportunity for MEV operators, allowing them to capitalize on temporary price fluctuations caused by the trader’s mistake. Back-running is a specialized MEV strategy that takes advantage of price fluctuations resulting from another transaction.
While 2Fast claimed a substantial share with nearly $1.8 million in earnings, on-chain data indicates that other bots also seized this profitable opportunity. The earnings from MEV tips in SOL are allocated to validators running the Jito client on Solana, fostering a symbiotic relationship between traders and validators in the Solana ecosystem.
Solana, a Layer 1 blockchain, continues to achieve significant milestones, surpassing Ethereum in 7-day stablecoin trading volume and NFT trade volume for the month of December. Solana recorded $103 billion in stablecoin trading volume, outperforming Ethereum, which secured the second position with $90.9 billion. In NFT trade volume, Solana hosted trades worth $366.6 million, surpassing Ethereum’s $353.2 million.
However, Ethereum maintained a slight edge in NFT sales over the past 30 days. Solana’s growing popularity is evident not only in trading volumes but also in search trends, with worldwide searches for “Solana” surpassing those for “Ethereum” in mid-December, according to Google Trends.
