An unknown trader attempted to exchange 50.43 million USDT for AAVE tokens through the CoW Protocol aggregator and the decentralized SushiSwap exchange, but only received 327 coins worth about $36,000. The actual purchase price of one coin was approximately $154,000, compared to a market price of $114 at the time. The situation was immediately used by MEV-bot, which tracks waiting transactions in the mosque.
Bot conducted a classic "sandwich attack": took a $29 million flash loan in WETH on the Morpho platform, purchased a large amount of AAVE on Bancor, broke the price, missed the victim’s transaction, bought an overvalued asset, and then sold his coins on SushiSwap, earning $9.9 million in profits. Aave founder Stani Kuletov reported that the protocol interface warned the investor about "critical slipping" due to an abnormally large warrant, but he confirmed the deal with a mobile device.
Kuletov promised that Aave would contact the user and reimburse him $600,000 in fees received from the transaction. The CoW DAO also confirmed that the user had seen near-total loss of funds warnings but knowingly approved the operation, stressing that no DEX or aggregator could execute such an order at an adequate price.