Yesterday proved to be the most lucrative day for Miner “extractable value” rewards (VME) since the Ethereum merger, with an impressive total of 6,006 ETH, or approximately $11.1 millionhaving been distributed.
This dramatic increase in MEV rewards happened simultaneously with a hack on Curve Financea popular decentralized finance (DeFi) platform.
A record day for Ethereum following a hack on Curve Finance
Ethereum had a record day in terms of block rewards for Maximum Extractable Value (MEV)following a hack affecting some liquidity pools on the decentralized exchange Curve Finance.
Yesterday was the most successful day for MEV since last year’s merger, with an estimate of 6,006 ETH (approximately $11.1 million) paid out as MEV rewards to validators. This information was harvested from data from mevboost.pics.
Data fetched directly from the Ethereum blockchain shed light on multiple slots (standard 12-second periods for full Ethereum blocks) exhibiting significant MEV rewards. This situation is largely attributed to the instability caused by the Curve Finance hack.
Block 6,992,273 recorded a reward of 584 ETH ($1.08 million)block 6,993,342 got a reward of 345 ETH ($641,000), and block 6,992,050 followed closely with a reward of 247 ETH ($459,000), as first observed by the analyst and investor Eric Conner.
All three of these events occurred within the last 24 hours. These figures are all the more significant as the average payment of MEV is only 0.060671 ether ($111) per block.
Race Against the Clock: Ethical Hackers vs. Malicious Actors for Control of Curve Funds
This dramatic rise in MEV rewards coincided with a hack on Curve Finance. Indeed, yesterday, a hacker exploited a reentrancy flaw in certain cash reserves of Curve, resulting in the theft of over $52 million.
In the chaos that followed, ethical hackers and malicious actors clashed : the former sought to protect the funds while the latter tried to take advantage of the vulnerability. Both groups finished by paying high MEV rewards to ensure that their transactions are accepted into the new Ethereum blocks as quickly as possible.
In an act of ethical hackingan MEV bot operator, identified by the ENS name “c0ffeebabe.eth”, returned 2,879 ETH ($5.4 million) to Curve Finance. These funds had previously been withdrawn from the CRV-ETH liquidity reserve during the hackC0ffeebabe.eth managed to get ahead of a malicious hacker, thereby securing the funds.
Source : The Block