New Trends in Solana on-chain MEV: The Rise of Atomic Arbitrage, Coexisting Profits and Risks

With the decentralized exchange (DEX) introducing personalized priority fee options and anti-trap measures, the profits from sandwich attacks on the Solana chain have significantly decreased. As of May 6, this figure has dropped to 582 SOL, far below the average daily profit of 10,000 SOL for a single attack bot a few months ago. However, this does not mark the end of MEV; a new type of atomic arbitrage is becoming the primary source of trading on the Solana chain.

Data shows that the proportion of atomic arbitrage on-chain has reached an astonishing level. On April 8th, the tip ratio contributed by atomic arbitrage was as high as 74.12%, and at other times it has generally remained above 50%. In other words, currently about half of the transactions on the Solana chain may be related to atomic arbitrage.

Despite this, discussions about atomic arbitrage on social media are few and far between. Is this emerging arbitrage opportunity a hidden treasure or another form of risk?

Atomic Arbitrage: A New Approach to MEV Trading

Atomic arbitrage refers to executing multi-step arbitrage operations within a single, atomic blockchain transaction. A typical case involves buying an asset at a low price on one DEX and then selling it at a high price on another DEX within the same transaction. Since the entire process is encapsulated in a single atomic transaction, it naturally eliminates the counterparty risk and partial execution risk present in traditional cross-exchange arbitrage or non-atomic arbitrage. If the transaction is successful, the profit is locked in; if it fails, apart from losing the transaction fee, the arbitrager's asset status is restored to its original state.

Atomicity is not designed for arbitrage, but is an inherent property of the blockchain that ensures state consistency. Arbitrageurs cleverly exploit this feature to bundle operations that originally needed to be executed in steps and carried risks into a single atomic unit, thereby eliminating execution risks from a technical perspective.

Compared to traditional sandwich attacks or automated trading bots, atomic arbitrage focuses more on discovering price differences in multiple trading pools to seize arbitrage opportunities, rather than being limited to a single trading pair.

Yield Analysis: The Coexistence of High Returns and Harsh Realities

Recent data shows that atomic arbitrage appears to have considerable profit potential. Over the past month, atomic arbitrage on the Solana blockchain has yielded 120,000 SOL (approximately 17 million USD). The address with the highest profit had a cost of only 128.53 SOL but made a profit of 14,129 SOL, resulting in a return rate of 109 times. The maximum single profit cost only 1.76 SOL, earning 1,354 SOL, with a single profit rate reaching as high as 769 times.

Statistics show that there are 5,656 atomic arbitrage bots, with an average income of 24.48 SOL (3,071 USD) per address and an average cost of about 870 USD. Monthly returns can reach 352%, which seems like a good investment opportunity.

However, this data only reflects the on-chain transaction costs, ignoring other inputs behind atomic arbitrage. According to MEV developers, executing atomic arbitrage requires hardware support such as private RPC and an 8-core 8G server. The conservative estimate for monthly operating costs is between $150 and $500, and this is just the minimum threshold.

Real case studies show that on a certain atomic arbitrage deployment platform, only 15 addresses earned more than 1 SOL in the past week, with the highest being 15 SOL. Most addresses earned less than 1 SOL, and some even incurred losses. Considering the costs of servers and nodes, the bots on this platform may generally be at a loss, and many have ceased operation.

The Mystery of Profit: Who Are the Real Beneficiaries?

Despite the poor individual data, the overall Solana atomic arbitrage bots are still in a profitable state. This aligns with the "80/20 rule", where a small number of high-level arbitrage bots generate significant profits, while the majority have become new "chives".

The key to successful atomic arbitrage lies in discovering arbitrage opportunities. Taking the highest yielding trade as an example, this trade purchased 3,679 tokens at 2.13 SOL (unit price about $0.08) and then sold them for $199,000 (unit price about $54.36). This clearly exploited a vulnerability in a liquidity-poor trading pool, with large buyers not paying attention to the pool's depth.

However, such opportunities are rare, and competition among on-chain bots is fierce. Occasional large arbitrage is more like winning the lottery, making it difficult to sustain.

The recent rise of atomic arbitrage may stem from some developers packaging it as a "guaranteed profit" business, offering a free version for beginners while taking a 10% profit share. They also charge subscription fees by assisting in building nodes, servers, and providing additional IP services.

In fact, due to the limited technical understanding of most users, the use of similar Arbitrage monitoring tools leads to minimal profits, making it difficult to cover basic costs. Unless equipped with unique Arbitrage opportunity monitoring tools and high-performance configurations, most participants may simply transition from being exploited in trading to being taken advantage of through purchasing servers and subscription fees.

As the number of participants increases, the probability of arbitrage failure rises. A certain high-yield program currently has a trading failure rate of over 99%, with almost all trades failing, and participants still need to pay on-chain fees.

Before diving into the seemingly enticing "atomic arbitrage" wave, potential participants should remain clear-headed, fully assess their own resources and capabilities, be wary of the overly packaged "guaranteed profits" promises, and avoid becoming victims in the new round of "gold rush."