COTI Makes MEV Bots Go Hungry

In March 2025 a Uniswap (UNI) trader swapped 220k USDT for USDC and walked away with only 5k after an MEV bot executed a textbook sandwich attack, pocketing 215k in eight seconds. The exploit is a perfect (but scary) example of how transparent mempools invite predators. 

COTI (COTI) says its protocol-level privacy would have made the attack impossible - and wants to make future DeFi private by default.

Anatomy Of The Loss

The bot spotted the large swap in mempool, paid higher gas to front-run, bought into the pool, inflated the price, let the victim suffer brutal slippage, then back-ran to sell at profit. Similar MEV tricks siphoned more than 700 million dollars from Ethereum users in 2024.

How COTI Stops It

COTI embeds garbled-circuit secure computation into blockchain execution. When a wallet submits a trade through a COTI-enabled DEX, token amounts, paths, and slippage limits are encrypted. Validators see ciphertext until the block finalizes.

Without clear-text order data, an MEV bot cannot calculate profit or reorder transactions; the sandwich collapses before bread hits filling.

Speed and composability

Past privacy layers slowed settlement, opening new attack vectors. COTI achieved the fastest decentralized confidential-computing benchmarks to date, keeping latency near public swaps. Developers integrate via lightweight SDKs; users experience familiar UX with airtight privacy. 

Zero-knowledge proofs allow selective disclosure for audits while shielding opportunistic miners.

Broader Use Cases

The same confidential rails can protect RWA transfers, DAO treasuries, stable-coin rebalances, or AI-driven market makers—any workflow where advance knowledge equals exploitation. COTI turns transparency from vulnerability into adjustable visibility: public enough for regulators, private enough to starve MEV.

With COTI live across major chains, DeFi projects can deploy MEV-proof pools and advertise fair execution as a feature. The notorious 215k sandwich becomes a cautionary relic, not a daily hazard, and traders finally gain the upper hand in the eternal bot wars.

Also See: NEAR’s Inflation Halving Hangs On Validator Vote

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