MEV Bot Front-Runs $7.7M rsETH Exploit As Kelp Freezes Intercepted Funds

Trusted Editorial content, reviewed by leading industry experts and seasoned editors. Ad Disclosure TL;DR An MEV searcher intercepted roughly $7.7 million in rsETH before an attacker could complete an exploit. The bot, known as “Yoink,” front-ran the malicious transaction. Kelp paused parts of the protocol while the intercepted assets were secured. An attacker targeting a Kelp DAO rsETH vault ran into an unexpected competitor: an MEV bot that got there first. The searcher, identified as Yoink, front-ran the exploit transaction and intercepted roughly $7.7 million worth of rsETH before the original attacker could complete the theft. That does not mean the incident never happened. It means the funds ended up somewhere different than the attacker expected. MEV Can Cut Both Ways Maximal extractable value normally has a bad reputation. Bots monitor pending transactions and reorder or insert their own trades to capture value. Users often experience that through sandwich attacks or worse execution. In this case, the same mechanism appears to have worked in the protocol’s favor. Yoink spotted the exploit opportunity in the mempool and submitted a transaction capable of executing before the...