Ethereum Fees Rise As Bots Spend Millions Running Up Players In PEPE, CHAD

Spade makers benefit the most from a gold rush, and crypto trends are no different.

Sandwich bots are leading punters of newly issued tokens like pepe (PEPE) and chad (CHAD) – memecoins with no intrinsic value that caught wind of Crypto Twitter degenerates almost overnight as the tokens zoomed over 10,000%.

A sandwich attack captures a user’s transaction between two transactions, which are then further manipulated for profit. This is done by preceding the victim’s trade by buying the same asset, then selling tokens to the victim in the same trade for a slightly higher price.

Sandwich attackers are usually not a form of exploitation, but are seen in crypto circles as a type of predatory behavior, skimming value from users, leading to an increase in gas fees, and not benefiting either the network or the user.

The victim may not notice, but for sandwich bots, the winnings can run into millions of dollars as they target thousands of wallets and skim a few dollars each time.

A wallet called “Jaredfromsubway.eth,” a likely nod to the popular sandwich chain, has spent over $2 million in the past week on Ethereum network fees to try to butter up traders betting on predominantly low-cap tokens.

This has driven up fees for the entire network, data from Dune Analytics shows. Each transaction on the Ethereum network costs over $10 as of Asian morning hours on Wednesday – ten times more than last week’s $1 level.

Jaredfromsubway.eth’s actions mean they spent 7% of all fees on Ethereum in the last 24 hours, the data shows, becoming the top user on the network.

That’s ahead of fees used by Arbitrum, a layer 2 blockchain that aggregates transactions on the Ethereum network, and Uniswap, the most widely used decentralized exchange.

It is unclear how much Jaredfromsubway.eth made from their front-running actions, but given that they spent a significant amount – and continue to do so – the gains likely exceed the costs by a significant amount.

Meanwhile, the pepe frenzy is in full swing. Pepe tokens nearly doubled in the past 24 hours as Crypto Twitter traders moved over their doge-themed token obsessions to bet on the internet meme instead, as CoinDesk reported.

Plenty of pepe wannabes have also appeared, as have chad, wojak and baby pepe – each a nod to internet memes.

Most of these are unlikely to last longer than a few weeks. But unlike then, entities like Jaredlikesubway.eth eat the winnings while they’re fresh.