Sandwich Attacks

Sandwich attacks are a specific form of market manipulation where a trader surrounds a victim's transaction with their own buy and sell orders. First, the attacker buys an asset before the victim, driving the price up, and then sells it immediately after the victim's transaction is processed, effectively capturing the price slippage.

This technique exploits the predictable nature of automated market makers and the visibility of transactions in the mempool. These attacks are highly profitable for the attacker but harmful to the victim, who receives a worse execution price.

Developers combat sandwich attacks by implementing slippage protection features and utilizing private transaction relays that hide trades from the public mempool until they are executed.