Solana sandwich bots took $29.7 million before costs, mostly targeting Pump.fun
Sandwich bots extracted about $29.7 million before prices from Solana trades over an 11-month interval, in response to blockchain information supplier Bitquery. It discovered 96% of detected assaults on memecoin platform Pump.enjoyable’s launch curve and its PumpSwap alternate.
The investigation, protecting profitable swaps, counted 6,850,144 assaults by 2,545 bot wallets affecting 2,154,994 distinct wallets between October 30, 2025, and October 7, 2026. Those addresses don’t symbolize a rely of particular person folks: different bots’ trades accounted for 39% of the estimated gross take.
A sandwich locations a bot’s buy and sale round one other dealer’s swap. The first buy raises the pool value; the intervening purchaser receives fewer tokens, and the bot sells into the upper value. The price reaches the dealer by execution, even when the swap completes efficiently.
Wide slippage marked better publicity
Among trades despatched by swap router Jupiter by Pump.enjoyable’s launch curve or PumpSwap, trades permitting 20%–50% slippage had been sandwiched 14 occasions as typically as these permitting beneath 3%, Bitquery discovered.
Slippage tolerance units how far execution can depart from a quote. Jupiter’s documentation describes a minimum acceptable output after making use of that tolerance. A value transfer past the restrict may cause a swap to fail; a wider restrict permits a worse fill. That creates a tradeoff between finishing a risky commerce and limiting the worth concession accepted alongside the best way.
The noticed assault charges didn’t rise uniformly with each wider setting. Trades under 0.5% tolerance had been hit extra typically than these at 1%–3%, whereas the 50%-or-more band was hit much less typically than the 20%–50% band.
The slippage comparability is observational and covers Jupiter routes by Pump.enjoyable’s launch curve or PumpSwap. Jupiter carried solely a small share of all sufferer trades within the investigation.
The $29.7 million estimate values SOL on the minute of every assault and doesn’t measure web revenue. In Bitquery’s separate 63-attack charge pattern, bots retained 68% of mixture gross proceeds, and 18 assaults misplaced cash after prices. That pattern doesn’t set up web earnings for the complete interval. The report additionally identifies inconsistent Pump.enjoyable sale-fee recording that impacts its gross estimate by about 3%.
Bitquery used repeated buying and selling patterns to establish bots, excluded spherical journeys starting in a token’s first 10 slots, and experiences gaps in alternate and block protection. Chain information can not show a bot noticed an order beforehand, and a few qualifying wallets could also be quick merchants.
Slippage limits deal with the worth a dealer will settle for. A separate research preprint submitted September 23, 2026 examined protected order stream, that means transactions supposed to be shielded from front-running, throughout six blockchains. Its authors discovered sandwich patterns extending throughout trades and blocks and concluded these protections can supply weaker ensures than customers count on.
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