Builders are engaging in MEV

[Tommyhom]

I submitted a comment on the following BNB Chain forum thread:

🔗 MEV in BSC – Is it still a thing?

The comment focused on current MEV activity on BSC and aimed to contribute constructively to the ongoing conversation. However, nearly 12 days have passed, and the comment has yet to be approved or published. It’s unclear whether the post was flagged, caught in moderation, or simply overlooked by the system.

Given that BSC is a decentralized chain, open and timely community dialogue should be encouraged, especially around sensitive but important topics like MEV. Builders are actively engaging in MEV on BSC, and this topic deserves transparent and thoughtful discussion.

[iGio90]

> 10:45:02 | 💱 **chart** - 9h15m0s
> 10:45:02 **PUISSANT**: 4.067033 (2664.532772)
> 10:45:02 **BLOCKRAZOR**: 1.253315 (821.114517)
> 10:45:02 **B5CB055**: 0.659350 (431.975746)
> 10:45:02 **Sergi**: 0.477325 (312.721167)
> 10:45:02 **AG**: 0.007622 (4.993580)

🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠

[im-hazyn]

Let's be specific.

This is 48 Club's (aka Puissant) contract:
https://bscscan.com/address/0x6b3affc894b0d2d566e5ff03ad79188f1b65bfff

This is Blockrazor's contract:
https://bscscan.com/address/0x149dD5112144205b9daf6A868e67C127a6fEA05A

And this is the type of shady and unfair MEV they're (48 Club in this case) doing on-chain, abusing their access to order flow as builder:
https://bscscan.com/txs?block=52772982&sort=desc&p=2

For those who don't know what that is, let me explain.
48 Club's contract, in this block, is taking advantage of the fact that it has full order flow control to perfectly order target transactions, from public mempool, private rpc, and private bundle services, to craft backrun transactions that extract MEV out of those target transactions for themselves.
You heard it right: they are doing it to private transactions too.
Those backrun transactions are NOT possible without privileged access to order flow and control, and that's something that only builders have.
Also, that was not an isolated case. This contract is sending this type of "impossible" MEV transactions under normal circumstances pretty much every second.

Searchers don't even have the chance to compete for the MEV of those target transactions, because the builders are unfairly extracting it all for themselves along with the process of building the block, so those opportunities are closed within the same block by the builders and searchers don't even have a chance to compete. Currently, searchers are only left with pennies, that builders failed to extract.
This is unfair, unethical, and goes against blockchain decentralization principles and the whole concept of PBS (Proposer Builder Separation).

That contract is engaging in that type of activity so freely and carelessly that it doesn't even bother to hide its activities. Any searcher who is accustomed to watching on-chain MEV activity can spot this immediately.
It ONLY sends transactions on blocks built by 48 Club. If it were a regular contract, why not submit transactions to blocks from other builders such as Blockrazor?
Answer: Because they can only do that on their own blocks, since they are doing it by manipulating order flow.

BSC, as a community, must engage to stop the builders from engaging in that type of unfair MEV.

If BSC wants to protect its credibility, something must be done.

[iGio90]

Moreover, 0gwei feature from puissant has been removed one week ago, and suddenly puissant bot started to arbitrage at the end of the block. fucking legalized mafia.

Sidenote. History teach that its not good to arise hate in places fullfilled of smart and talented developers.
The main objective will shift from build to destroy.

[kaber2]

If this is truly the case, I would suggest for someone who cares to talk to the authorities. Abusing priviledged access to information for gaining an advantage in trading is illegal in most jurisdictions. Make an example out of them to stop this once and for all.

[testmail0719]

damn

[iGio90]

I would like to spend a couple of more words in the name and shame as bullets:

• We once had access to puissant stream together with 4 other entities that was trusted by puissant devs (despite we pushed to make sure those searchers are not just nicknames behind monitors)
• It was not possible to compete for a lot of opportunities due to timing, even by bribing more.
• Puissant backrun my bundles. I've asked for an option to opt-out from this and i got a fuck off as reply
• Blockrazor is whilling to help to solve the situation, but as a real business with a real entity, they fear for blindly frontrunning over private transactions.

[morexcess]

let CZ know about it ,BSC is the most centralized chain ever. 48 and blockrazor control the block .

[kaber2]

let CZ know about it ,BSC is the most centralized chain ever. 48 and blockrazor control the block .

BSC has been a cesspool of corruption for years now. I was hopeful that PBS might improve the situation, but apparently not so. One must wonder why the option of not using permissionless relays has been chosen.

[morexcess]

let CZ know about it ,BSC is the most centralized chain ever. 48 and blockrazor control the block .

BSC has been a cesspool of corruption for years now. I was hopeful that PBS might improve the situation, but apparently not so. One must wonder why the option of not using permissionless relays has been chosen.

change will break someone's profit chain , only CZ can bring it back to the game that BSC has the chance to reach SOL's success. let CZ know

[Jolly23]

Let me make a quick introduction to those guys.

The repliers above are the biggest sandwich attackers in BSC history. (iGio90 for example, the diamond hands, earned more than $10M from BSC sandwich attacks).
They're the biggest problem on BSC, especially after the GWA was established.
They were driven crazy by our greatest sandwich blocker 48Club-bscexorcist because it works too well against their types of sandwich attacks.
And then they tried to sandwich using two separate bundles but got hit hard again by our backrun-bot.
@iGio90 tell me, tell the public - why do you want an opt-out function that prevents your bundles from being backrun by our bot? Why you're so afraid my bot stands in-between your two bundls?

This is a good time to introduce our backrun-bot, which was initially designed to attack the attackers who try to do sandwich attacks in non-atomic ways. running parallel with our 48Club-bscexorcist.
They cannot sandwich anymore, their money flies away when they try new experimental methods.
They went crazy. They are basically destroyed by us. They DDoS our service, submit fake bundles.

So they pick some nonsense to criticize us.

The bot also has the ability to improve our block value and do backruns, which never hurt users' swap values but help move liquidity fairly on the other hand.

I want to give people who read this and are touched by their nonsense story the real background.
I want people to know who you are and explain why we made a backrun-bot.
We the 48Club don't like using sender/contract-blacklist to solve sandwich problems temporally, we want to solve sandwich problems like an army.

Plus, accusing builders of taking 90% of your MEV profits? Did you even check that builders send 99% of this money to BSC validators? So what now - are you saying the BSC and its validators are the new mafia?

Howdy to the greatest sandwich attackers,
48Club

[iGio90]

Dude you don't really want me to reply. You just don't.
10m sandwiches but the hack of all my contracts of past week was 2m with a lot of them coming from arbitrages.

You are justifying your actions by screaming nonsense irrelevant things. Your text looks like "hey everyone don't look at me doing shits now, those guys did bigger shits blah blah blah"

Play fair. Arbitrage those txs at the next block like everyone else.

You asked me some days ago if I feel I was always fair. I'm still waiting for you to tell me the moment I been unfair.

Or you can't say that because you have problems in telling the truth?

@iGio90 tell me, tell the public - why do you want an opt-out function that prevents your bundles from being backrun by our bot? Why you're so afraid my bot stands in-between your two bundls?

Because I don't want to share my profits with you 🫠. Im not afraid, go for it. Remember that if you are doing something to me for more than 2 times, its because i want you to do that. Welcome to mev.

[edj99]

@Jolly23 Let's say that your accusations are true about those guys, does it solve the issue that was pointed at ? Not at all.
How are your practices fair for the searchers that are not sandwitch attackers ? Isn't decentralization one of the main point of BSC ?
Even by using your services Auction Transaction Feed competing agains't your bots is not possible even when bribing more.
Trying to sweep the main problem under the carpet by accusing others of bad behavior doesn't allow you to do the same.

[rsxlj]

When builders themselves jump in to run these backrun transactions, it makes the competition unfair. Their talk about preventing "sandwich attacks" is really just an excuse. They are using their inside knowledge to compete unfairly. This isn't just about targeting igio90. They are squeezing profits away from almost every mev researcher, and even from miners. Now, regular chances to profit from backrun transaction are very hard to find. Yet, these few addresses have grabbed huge profits. ​We just want true, fair competition.​​

[cracksparrow00]

You forgot that 95% of the sandwich profit goes to the builder, and as we’ve shown with data, our main targets were scam bots. We’re willing to refund any real user or verified entity that was harmed.

We're saying this is unfair competition in arbitrage — it's more than fair criticism. And as your response demonstrates, you have no real argument.
@Jolly23

[im-hazyn]

@Jolly23 , trying to undermine the discussion by accusing others of being bad people won't work. Personally, I'm a searcher and only do backrun arbitrage. I’ve never done a single sandwich, but that's not even the main point here. This topic isn't about sandwiches. You're actually the first one to mention the word "sandwich" in this thread.

Let’s not get baited by his rhetoric. Let’s stay focused on what matters: BSC now has an entity in PBS (Proposer Builder Separation) that acts as both a Builder and a Searcher, combined, and something must be done.
Either influential figures (like CZ) need to step in and push builders to stop this behavior, or the BSC developers and community must start discussing a technical solution to prevent this Builder+Searcher setup from being possible at the protocol level.

If anyone has ideas for a technical solution to this issue, or knows how other chains have addressed similar problems, I encourage you to share them in this thread.

Why is what the builders are doing a problem?
They currently have the power to execute any type of trading they want, currently being done in the form of backrun arbitrage. In traditional finance, that activity would be classified as insider trading, and everyone knows insider trading only benefits the people doing it, at the expense of fairness.

This Builder+Searcher entity has privileged access to every single transaction. They're effectively acting like searchers on steroids. They see every transaction’s swap activity before anyone else, and they get to control the exact position of each transaction within the block. They then insert their own backrun transactions immediately after the targeted ones to maximize their own profits.

Regular searchers can’t compete with that. In fact, nobody should have that kind of access, but on BSC, it’s currently possible, and they're taking full advantage of it.

There are two main players doing this: 48 Club and Blockrazor, the builders responsible for most of the blocks being produced right now. Normal people can't compete. And it’s not just searchers losing here. Even validators don’t benefit, because centralizing MEV in builders reduces fee competition and leads to blocks being included that aren’t necessarily the most profitable for validators as they would be in a free market.

Killing competition hurts the BSC ecosystem, and that’s a hard thing to argue against.

Let’s focus on bringing visibility to this issue, educating the community, and pushing for real technical solutions.