Exclusive data shows that MEV attacks hit hundreds of traders on Ethereum each month and continue to result in millions in losses.
Maximal extractable value (MEV) refers to the economic value diverted from users by block builders through the manipulation of transaction ordering. The most harmful type of MEV are sandwich attacks, where an attacker simultaneously frontruns and backruns a victim’s swaps. This gives the victim a suboptimal execution price while the attacker pockets a spread. Most MEV activity occurs on Ethereum because it has high activity on DEXs and features an open block-building market that exposes order flow to searchers.
In this article, Cointelegraph Research provides insights into sandwiching activity from November 2024 to October 2025, based on a data set of more than 95,000 sandwich attacks exclusively provided by the data platform EigenPhi.
Our research indicates that, despite the slowdown in sandwich extraction, the risk to ordinary users persists. While attacks result in about $60 million in annual losses for traders, block builders capture most of this value through gas fees. Attackers end up with a profit margin of merely 5%. Almost 40% of all sandwiches hit low-volatility pools, which indicates that traders can experience severe slippage even on swaps that are typically considered safe. Nevertheless, the decline in extraction may also suggest that more traders are now using MEV-protection tools.
