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Hauptverfasser: Torres, Christof Ferreira, Mamuti, Albin, Weintraub, Ben, Nita-Rotaru, Cristina, Shinde, Shweta
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2024
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Online-Zugang:https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.00138
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author Torres, Christof Ferreira
Mamuti, Albin
Weintraub, Ben
Nita-Rotaru, Cristina
Shinde, Shweta
author_facet Torres, Christof Ferreira
Mamuti, Albin
Weintraub, Ben
Nita-Rotaru, Cristina
Shinde, Shweta
contents The emergence of decentralized finance has transformed asset trading on the blockchain, making traditional financial instruments more accessible while also introducing a series of exploitative economic practices known as Maximal Extractable Value (MEV). Concurrently, decentralized finance has embraced rollup-based Layer-2 solutions to facilitate asset trading at reduced transaction costs compared to Layer-1 solutions such as Ethereum. However, rollups lack a public mempool like Ethereum, making the extraction of MEV more challenging. In this paper, we investigate the prevalence and impact of MEV on Ethereum and prominent rollups such as Arbitrum, Optimism, and zkSync over a nearly three-year period. Our analysis encompasses various metrics including volume, profits, costs, competition, and response time to MEV opportunities. We discover that MEV is widespread on rollups, with trading volume comparable to Ethereum. We also find that, although MEV costs are lower on rollups, profits are also significantly lower compared to Ethereum. Additionally, we examine the prevalence of sandwich attacks on rollups. While our findings did not detect any sandwiching activity on popular rollups, we did identify the potential for cross-layer sandwich attacks facilitated by transactions that are sent across rollups and Ethereum. Consequently, we propose and evaluate the feasibility of three novel attacks that exploit cross-layer transactions, revealing that attackers could have already earned approximately 2 million USD through cross-layer sandwich attacks.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2405_00138
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Rolling in the Shadows: Analyzing the Extraction of MEV Across Layer-2 Rollups
Torres, Christof Ferreira
Mamuti, Albin
Weintraub, Ben
Nita-Rotaru, Cristina
Shinde, Shweta
Cryptography and Security
The emergence of decentralized finance has transformed asset trading on the blockchain, making traditional financial instruments more accessible while also introducing a series of exploitative economic practices known as Maximal Extractable Value (MEV). Concurrently, decentralized finance has embraced rollup-based Layer-2 solutions to facilitate asset trading at reduced transaction costs compared to Layer-1 solutions such as Ethereum. However, rollups lack a public mempool like Ethereum, making the extraction of MEV more challenging. In this paper, we investigate the prevalence and impact of MEV on Ethereum and prominent rollups such as Arbitrum, Optimism, and zkSync over a nearly three-year period. Our analysis encompasses various metrics including volume, profits, costs, competition, and response time to MEV opportunities. We discover that MEV is widespread on rollups, with trading volume comparable to Ethereum. We also find that, although MEV costs are lower on rollups, profits are also significantly lower compared to Ethereum. Additionally, we examine the prevalence of sandwich attacks on rollups. While our findings did not detect any sandwiching activity on popular rollups, we did identify the potential for cross-layer sandwich attacks facilitated by transactions that are sent across rollups and Ethereum. Consequently, we propose and evaluate the feasibility of three novel attacks that exploit cross-layer transactions, revealing that attackers could have already earned approximately 2 million USD through cross-layer sandwich attacks.
title Rolling in the Shadows: Analyzing the Extraction of MEV Across Layer-2 Rollups
topic Cryptography and Security
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.00138