1inch releases new tool to protect traders against ‘sandwich attacks’

Exchange aggregator 1inch released a caller instrumentality called “Rabbithole” connected Nov. 25, which the institution says volition support traders against malicious “sandwich attacks.” The squad announced the motorboat of the instrumentality successful a property merchandise that has been made disposable to Cointelegraph.

Rabbithole works by allowing users to taxable transactions straight to Ethereum nodes, bypassing the mempool. In bid to usage it, users request to alteration the distant process telephone (RPC) endpoint successful their crypto wallet. After that, each swap initiated via 1inch volition beryllium analyzed by the backstage tx routing algorithm developed by the 1inch squad and past sent to validators straight if determination is simply a anticipation of a sandwich attack.

According to the property release, a “sandwich attack” is simply a benignant of crypto font-running that consists of 3 steps:

1. The attacker scans the blockchain’s mempool until it finds a high-value transaction
2. A transaction is submitted to front-run the victim’s purchase, and higher state is paid to marque definite that the attacker’s transaction gets processed earlier the victim’s. This aboriginal transaction pumps the terms of the coin that is astir to beryllium purchased, causing the unfortunate to wage more
3. After the victim’s transaction is processed, the attacker submits a 2nd transaction that sells their coins, pocketing the quality successful price

This benignant of onslaught is truthful named due to the fact that it “sandwiches” the victim’s transaction betwixt 2 transactions submitted by the attacker.

According to a study by TarLogic, titled, “Tracking Ethereum blockchain crypto attackers: Measuring sandwich attacks,” implicit 60,000 Ether (ETH) was mislaid from sandwich attacks from May 2020 to April 2022 — a worth of implicit $72,000 astatine the clip of publication.

The crypto R&D team, Flashbots, had antecedently released a python room that allowed users to taxable transactions straight to nodes. However, this room could lone beryllium utilized successful a developer environment. According to 1inch, Rabbithole is simply a room that works likewise to Flashbots, but it besides includes a consumer-friendly frontend for users.

Rabbithole is the latest successful a drawstring of upgrades to the 1inch decentralized speech (DEX) aggregator. In August 2021, the squad launched an Ethereum furniture 2 version connected Optimism and successful November 2021, a caller mainnet router to optimize state costs was implemented.