GM! Welcome to Milk Road PRO – your weekly crypto report that lights up your inbox just like the light in your fridge lights up your milk carton. 🥛 |
Did you know that a small amount of money is being stolen from you almost every time you transact on Uniswap or most other DEX’s? |
That’s right, you’re being robbed and you don’t even know it. |
Find out how much you’ve been robbed of here & share the screenshot with us by replying to this email. |
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This is such a big problem that on some days more than $600k is being stolen from trades on Ethereum and $3.9 million on Binance Smart Chain. 🤯 |
And no, we’re not talking about gas fees or protocol fees. Those are typical fees that you are made aware of before you execute a trade. |
We’re also not talking about hacks or exploits. |
We’re talking about MEV – Maximal Extractable Value – more on what this is in just a second. |
Context: In the last 30 days, about $20.5 billion worth of transactions were compromised by MEV on Ethereum alone. |
This is a really big deal and also becoming a really big opportunity… to fix it! |
If someone can fix this problem, it could become one of the most successful protocols onchain. |
At Milk Road PRO, we like to cover big opportunities – so today we’re going to introduce you to the protocol that is currently winning the race to solve the billion dollar problem of MEV. |
Not only will this solution save you a lot of $$$ when you transact onchain, it just might offer a nice 20x return, if it all works out according to our calculations that we’ll share below. In today’s PRO report, we are going to cover: |
WTF is Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) How can we prevent our hard earned money from being robbed What protocol is leading the way in solving the MEV issue (hint hint: CoW Protocol) 2 ways you can capitalize on this opportunity! |
Note: MEV is a very technical subject and so is the solution that CoW Protocol provides – today, we aim to oversimplify everything so you wrap your head around this & capitalize on the opportunity. |
Also, we believe that MEV is about to become a hot topic in this industry in the near future, so put in the work now and get ahead of the curve. |
Let’s get into it. 👇 |
WTF IS MAXIMAL EXTRACTABLE VALUE? 😵💫 |
MEV, or Maximum Extractable Value, is basically the value that certain players can capture for their profit at the expense of users. |
Because transactions are publicly available onchain, sophisticated users can see the transaction you are performing and manipulate them before they go through. |
Your transactions still occur as usual – and seem normal to most – but in fact, these sophisticated users are stealing some value first. |
There are several types of MEV: |
Sandwich attacks Arbitrage attacks Liquidation |
Today, we’ll focus mainly on sandwich and arbitrage attacks, as these are the most common ones happening on the blockchain. And yes, you can protect yourself against them. |
Let's start with an example of a sandwich attack – this has probably happened to most reading this report. |
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It's called a sandwich because your transaction gets "sandwiched" between two transactions from the attacker. Let's break it down with an example: |
The user places a transaction. This transaction goes to the public mempool (aka large database of submitted transactions). A searcher spots your transaction and decides to frontrun it by buying the same token before you do. The searcher's trade pushes the token's price higher. The user ends up buying at this higher price, getting a worse deal. The user's trade raises the price even more. The searcher then sells the token at this new, higher price, making a profit. |
In this game, it's clear who loses: the user. |
The user ends up paying more for the token and gets a worse deal, while the searcher profits from the price manipulation. 😡 |
Okay, and what about arbitrage? You might have a hunch about what arbitrage means, but here’s a quick rundown. |
In one place, people trade a token for $100. In another place, they trade it for $105. This shows that the value varies between the two locations. This price difference is an arbitrage opportunity – some can exploit it very well. |
In this type of attack, it's the liquidity providers (LPs) who bear the costs. |
But later, we will discuss a solution to protect LPs too. |
Now that we've covered the different types of MEV, let's dive into some stats. |
Sandwich attacks (green on the chart below) make up the bulk of MEV on the blockchain, accounting for about 80% of that volume. |
Every day, these attacks target transactions worth between $500 million and $700 million. |
Next up is arbitrage (blue on the chart below), which targets daily volumes around $100 million. |
In total, there are around 10,000 transactions each day that are purely MEV attacks. |
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Now that we have an idea of what MEV is, the next question is… What's causing the problem? |
The issue is that on the blockchain, anyone can see a user's activity and try to exploit it for profit. This is the downside of transparency. |
Imagine a bank plans to buy shares in a company. If they announce it publicly, everyone can rush to frontrun it and profit (the bank then acquires less shares as a result). |
It's similar on the blockchain but much quicker. |
Now, consider if the bank hadn't announced its plan. Instead, it held a secret auction to private sellers. |
This method could yield the bank more shares. Similarly, we need to ensure that blockchain users get the best deal. |
If users are paying more for transactions onchain due to MEV, then why would anyone switch from the TradFi rails? |
We must solve this problem. |
What's the solution? |
The solution involves using special methods to keep transactions private until they're confirmed. |