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Sandwich Attack
Placing trades both before and after a victim's trade to profit from its price impact.
A sandwich attack surrounds a victim's pending trade with two transactions of the attacker's own — one placed immediately before, and one immediately after — designed to profit from the price movement the victim's own trade causes.
This is a specific, well-documented form of MEV activity (see Kaavon's "Maximal Extractable Value" glossary definition), distinct from front-running in that it places transactions on both sides of the victim's trade rather than just ahead of it, and can result in the victim receiving a meaningfully worse execution price than expected.
Examples
- A large swap on a decentralized exchange with a public mempool can be a target for a sandwich attack.
- Slippage protection settings can help limit how much a sandwich attack can affect a trade's execution.