Want to trade meme coins but constantly getting sandwiched? Use "Flashbots Protect" to prevent sandwich attacks.
In the recent meme coin frenzy, a DeFi veteran named jaredfromsubway.eth used MEV bots to conduct sandwich attacks on a large number of meme coin swaps, causing an increase in transaction costs and a significant rise in Ethereum gas fees. In response, Twitter user 0xQuit shared a useful tool called "Flashbots Protect" with the community to help users prevent sandwich attacks during transactions and reduce slippage.
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Introduction to Flashbots Protect, reducing slippage and preventing sandwich attacks
According to previous reports, Flashbots is a neutral and unbiased interdisciplinary research organization composed of blockchain developers and researchers, dedicated to research, data analysis, and solution development related to MEV. It has already produced several research achievements, such as MEV-Inspect, which can scan Ethereum blockchain data and identify MEV activities, MEV-Explore, a real-time data platform based on MEV-Inspect, and Flashbots Alpha, a solution to mitigate MEV issues.
0xQuit mentioned in this article is the RPC service "Flashbots Protect" launched by Flashbots. There are two main benefits of using Flashbots Protect for transactions:
- Transactions are directly sent to miners, not to the public mempool, to prevent frontrunning or sandwich attacks.
- If a transaction fails, gas fees will not be lost.
Therefore, after using Flashbots Protect, MEV bots like jaredfromsubway.eth will not be able to exploit users during transactions.
To use this feature, simply add a new network manually in Metamask and enter the following parameters:
- Network Name: Any
- RPC URL:rpc.flashbots.net
- Chain ID: 1
- Currency Code: ETH
After the setup is complete, simply switch the network to Flashbots before making any transactions on decentralized exchanges to avoid unnecessary slippage and potential attacks.
"The best way to protect yourself is to stop trading garbage coins without liquidity, and the second best way is to use Flashbots," said 0xQuit.
However, it is important to note that transactions sent through Flashbots will be considered expired and abandoned if not executed within 6 minutes. Additionally, transactions below 42,000 gas, such as simple ETH transfers that do not require protection against frontrunning, do not need to use Flashbots and will be sent to the public mempool for execution at the fastest speed.