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Tracing + token flow analysis

Primer

Process

Aside from the EOA initiating the transaction itself, we check for balance changes for the contract (in the to field of the tx) that executes the arb/liquidation but also proxy contracts that can be identified by looking at the delegate calls (if any) in the tx traces.

Types of traces (by action_type):

  • Call, which happens when a method on the same contract or a different one is executed. We can identify the input parameters in each instance by looking at this trace.
  • Self-destruct, when a arbitrage contract destroys the code at its address and transfers the ETH held in the contract to an EOA. Common pattern among searchers given gas refunds.
  • Create, when a contract deploys another contract and transfers assets to it.
  • Reward, pertaining to the block reward and uncle reward, not relevant here.

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More on delegate calls: https://medium.com/coinmonks/delegatecall-calling-another-contract-function-in-solidity-b579f804178c

Examples

Simple Arb across DEXs

Example:

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https://etherscan.io/tx/0x4121ce805d33e952b2e6103a5024f70c118432fd0370128d6d7845f9b2987922

ETH=>ENG=>ETH across DEXs

Script output:
EOA: 0x00000098163d8908dfbd126c873c9c4732a2c2e6
Contract: 0x000000000000006f6502b7f2bbac8c30a3f67e9a
Tx proxy: 0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000000
Stablecoins inflow/outflow: [0, 0]
Net ETH profit, Wei 22357881284770142

^accurate and accounts for gas spent

Arb flowing through stablecoin

Example:

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https://etherscan.io/tx/0x496836e0bd1520388e36c79d587a31d4b3306e4f25352164178ca0667c7f9c29

Here the contract flows through the tether pool but only for the arb and they exit without any at the end.

Script output:

EOA: 0xcbb9feb9f882bb78b06ca335ee32f13a621c1a35
Contract: 0x000000000a2daefe11b26dcdaecde7d33ad03e9d
Tx proxy: 0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000000
Stablecoins inflow/outflow: [871, 871]
Net ETH profit, Wei 2848191823313317

Arbs through multiple stablecoins

Example:

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https://etherscan.io/tx/0x5ab21bfba50ad3993528c2828c63e311aafe93b40ee934790e545e150cb6ca73

Script output:

EOA: 0x46eaadc8f2199463db26d1797131900575f0d264
Contract: 0x5a48ae20173382884929dd5e130ed9b81931ea88
Tx proxy: 0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000000
Stablecoins inflow/outflow: [0, 0]
Net ETH profit, Wei 46223431362651237

Here we notice the stablecoin inflow/outflow to be 0 despite flowing through them, this is because for those trades, the coins are transferred between the router and not the eao/contract/proxy, so they do not have to be accounted. We still get the net MEV profit accurately without having to look at the different tokens involved.

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inspect listener error

ERROR:__main__:{'code': -32000, 'message': 'first run for txIndex 275 error: insufficient funds for gas * price + value: address 0x9D8e2dc5615c674F329d18786D52A F10a65Af08b have 241395854351228173 want 241436981652380070'} Halts at block: https://etherscan.io/block/15538730 Tx causing the break (payment from block builder to fee receipient): https://etherscan.io/tx/0xdc8a049e7a122eebd33833627bcb1c2dc0fa57515d7273d70b73a742753f9d71

Nov 16, 2022
mev-inspect collaboration

Given the limited capacity we have, it’s best to push mev-inspect-py and the dashboards depending on it to a contributor / community maintained work stream. We would like to give a grant for the grantee to complete the following tasks in the next 2-3 months (in order of priority): Debug and fix critical bugs that stop the listener from moving forward Currently, we modified it (only in prod) to skip over blocks with errors as a hacky fix but ideally we fix issues that cause it to halt in the first place Ensure mev-inspect data <> dune export tool works Currently, as long as the listener is running, it exports that data into dune’s s3 but like mentioned above, if it stops so does the export tool Create a dashboard on Dune that looks similar to mev-explore as an example to showcase how the community can use the data to create dashboard. (we will deprecate mev-explore after this, and point any post-merge graphs to this Dune dashboard)

Nov 16, 2022
Untitled

TBD What are some good heuristics to identify "arb flow" inspect can pickup arb bots that execute atomic complete swap cycles, compile their addresses for any given pool and filter that out as arb flow? but what about stat arb? are single swaps that take advantage of deviation from external "true price" to be accounted for as well? how does this change for assets that don't exist on CEXs or just have a single pool on-chain (all flow is non-arb flow?) What does arb/non-arb volume breakdown for any given pool tell us?

Mar 7, 2022
Potential yield pools / Ukraine design

Design goal: Let people delegate their funds (stables/ETH) and donate the yield Plug into as many yield sources w/ sufficient TVL Something like https://rdai.money/, more flexible Proposed Architecture: accept arbitrary token -> swap for stablecoin -> tokenize stablecoin 1:1 -> deposit stablecoin into vault -> yToken held by proxy -> bot harvests yield and sends to donation add For ETH, BTC and stables

Feb 28, 2022
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