A trader suffered a 99.3% loss after a transaction routed through a low-liquidity pool was manipulated by a MEV bot.
A cryptocurrency trader lost approximately $2 million after a transaction was exploited via a maximal extractable value (MEV) bot. The trade involved 1,117 Ether routed into a low-liquidity AVAIL/WETH pool on Uniswap v3, executing at roughly 120 times the market price of AVAIL tokens.
The incident highlights risks in decentralized finance (DeFi), where MEV bots and liquidity routers can manipulate trades. The victim received 6.67 million AVAIL tokens at an inflated price before the bot extracted 1,072 WETH, leaving the trader with just $14,200 in LIT tokens. Titan, the block builder involved, earned $1.8 million from the exploit.
Titan has generated $112.6 million in revenue this year, with its largest single-day profit of $34 million recorded in March from a separate MEV bot incident.