Curve Finance Exploit Leads to One of the Largest MEV Block Rewards in Ethereum’s History

Recent reports reveal that a vulnerability in Curve Finance resulted in one of the largest-ever Miner Extractable Value (MEV) block rewards, totaling 584.05 ETH.

On July 31, Ethereum core developer “eric.eth” shared that “the largest MEV reward block in Ethereum’s history” had been generated. He attributed this to an attack on Curve Finance’s stable pool on July 30.

While March had seen a larger MEV reward block of 692 ETH, this incident has garnered significant attention.

Eric.eth further explained, “A bot noticed the impending hack in the mempool, replayed the transaction, and front-ran it,” adding, “To achieve this, they paid a large amount of ETH to the block producer to have their transaction prioritized.”

MEV bots aim to generate profit by reordering and/or inserting transactions into blocks to create arbitrage opportunities.

They can also target pending liquidation transactions and front-run them, purchasing liquidated assets at a discount.

Validators may use relays to propose blocks, outsourcing the block production process to entities specializing in extracting additional revenue. In exchange, these entities earn a share of the MEV profits for allowing bots to front-run transactions.

This practice is referred to as “block rewards,” and in the past few hours, several large rewards have been recorded.

According to Beaconcha.in, the highest MEV block reward in this instance was 584.05 ETH, worth roughly $1 million, confirmed at 1:34 AM UTC on July 31. At the same time, there were also block rewards of 345 ETH and 247 ETH.