Case Study

WBTC inventory unwind

A larger inventory unwind shows stronger sandwich economics: the trade is big enough to reward inventory-taking searchers, and the victim’s realized output diverges sharply from the pre-submit expectation.

Observed execution

Chain

Base

Venue

Aerodrome

Tx hash

0x4c1f2e7304

Trade size

$92,000

Victim output

90,860 USDC

Observed loss

$267

Large notional on an AMM venue increased the economic incentive for a profitable bracket.
The user reported a sharp mismatch between expected and realized execution.
The surrounding pattern is consistent with a front-run and unwind around the victim swap.

Fair-ordering replay

Replay output

91,102 USDC

Residual loss

$31

Recovered value

$236

Deterministic fair ordering reduces the attacker’s ability to reposition around the victim in the critical path.
Most of the remaining loss is normal impact from trade size rather than extracted MEV.

For size-sensitive traders, even one or two avoided brackets can justify testing a fair-ordering endpoint.