120,000 DEX Traders Hit by Sandwich Attacks as BNB Chain Activity Surges

- Over 120,000 DEX traders on BNB Chain affected by sandwich attacks in two weeks. - Binance Alpha program linked to increased BNB Chain activity and rise in attacks. On June 8, 2025, Cryptopolitan reported that the BNB Smart Chain (BSC) experienced a resurgence in sandwich attacks. These attacks impacted over 120,000 decentralized exchange (DEX) traders for two consecutive weeks. This trend surfaced alongside a general uptick in network activity, during which trading volumes exceeded $1 billion over this two-week period. According to Dragonfly data analyst Hildobby on X (formerly Twitter), the spike in sandwich attacks began around mid-May. The attacks subsequently continued their upward trajectory through the final week of May and the initial week of June. During these two weeks, such attacks affected over 100,000 DEX traders weekly. Sandwich attacks are a form of on-chain market manipulation. In these attacks, attackers front-run a victim’s transaction by placing their own trades before and after it. This tactic allows them to buy a token at a lower price before the victim's purchase and then sell it at a higher price immediately after. Attackers exploit the public nature of mempools, where transactions are visible before execution. This visibility enables them to offer higher fees to miners, who then prioritize their transactions. Earlier in the year, BNB Chain implemented Maximum Extracted Value (MEV) protection, which led to a significant decline in sandwich attacks from late March to early May. Despite these measures, however, the recent resurgence of attacks indicates ongoing vulnerabilities. The Cryptopolitan report of June 8 further detailed that sandwich attacks affected over 776,000 transactions in the first week of June, with observers explicitly identifying approximately 207,000 of these as such. Meanwhile, the total number of sandwich bots on BSC has dwindled to under 300 weekly since early April, marking a sharp decrease from nearly 9,000 in mid-February. The Binance Alpha program, launched on May 20, 2025, largely drove the increased activity on BNB Chain. This program, which focuses on promoting early-stage Web3 projects and offers users access to tokens and airdrops, attracted numerous new users to the network and significantly boosted DEX volume. According to Defillama on June 15, 2025, BNB Chain has emerged as the leading network for DEX volume over the past 30 days, recording $147.18 billion, far outpacing Solana at $79.31 billion. Defillama's data further indicates that BSC leads in daily volume with $3.63 billion and has also overtaken Solana in memecoin trading activity. Nonetheless, concerns exist that users engaging in wash trading to farm points as part of the Binance Alpha program might be inflating some of this trading volume. On June 15, 2025, at 22:08 UTC, BNB (BNB) traded at $646.01, with a 0.268% change in 24-hour volume. Solana (SOL) traded at $151.08, reflecting a 4.341% change in 24-hour volume.