fknmarqu🥪 MEV Monitor: Solana Sandwich Attacks
Table of ContentsIntroductiontl;drThe Financial Impact: Quantifying the Drain & Costs 3.1 Overall Scale of Value Extraction 3.2 Attacker Economics: Costs vs. Profitability 3.3 User Costs: Direct Losses and Transaction Fees 3.4 Temporal Impact Trends 3.5 Summary of Financial ImplicationsWho & How: The Attacker Landscape & Strategies 4.1 The Dual Challenge: Attribution & Ecosystem Complexity 4.2 Attacker Economics as a Behavioral Proxy 4.3 Diverse Execution Methods & Infrastructure Insights 4.4...
fknmarquUniswap v3 Gas ⛽️
When using a smart contract blockchain, users have to pay a fee to miners/validators so they include their transaction into the next block to get executed. The fee is called gas and how much of it you need to pay depends on the complexity of the transaction. But while the amount of gas needed for a contract remains constant over time, the price of gas does not, being subject to market forces of supply and demand. *While there is more to say on the subject of gas, Etherscan says it better. In ...
fknmarquWho's onboarding Solana users?
I think we all have a feeling that Solana keeps on growing as an ecosystem and users continue to join the blockchain. But how are users actually getting onboarded? And how many of them stick around? In this report we will look at three categories users can interact with and follow their retention rates over the course of 6 weeks. These categories are:ProgramsNFTsTokensA quick note on new users: we’re considering an address to be new if it did not make any transaction in the respective categor...
fknmarqu🥪 MEV Monitor: Solana Sandwich Attacks
Table of ContentsIntroductiontl;drThe Financial Impact: Quantifying the Drain & Costs 3.1 Overall Scale of Value Extraction 3.2 Attacker Economics: Costs vs. Profitability 3.3 User Costs: Direct Losses and Transaction Fees 3.4 Temporal Impact Trends 3.5 Summary of Financial ImplicationsWho & How: The Attacker Landscape & Strategies 4.1 The Dual Challenge: Attribution & Ecosystem Complexity 4.2 Attacker Economics as a Behavioral Proxy 4.3 Diverse Execution Methods & Infrastructure Insights 4.4...
fknmarquUniswap v3 Gas ⛽️
When using a smart contract blockchain, users have to pay a fee to miners/validators so they include their transaction into the next block to get executed. The fee is called gas and how much of it you need to pay depends on the complexity of the transaction. But while the amount of gas needed for a contract remains constant over time, the price of gas does not, being subject to market forces of supply and demand. *While there is more to say on the subject of gas, Etherscan says it better. In ...
fknmarquWho's onboarding Solana users?
I think we all have a feeling that Solana keeps on growing as an ecosystem and users continue to join the blockchain. But how are users actually getting onboarded? And how many of them stick around? In this report we will look at three categories users can interact with and follow their retention rates over the course of 6 weeks. These categories are:ProgramsNFTsTokensA quick note on new users: we’re considering an address to be new if it did not make any transaction in the respective categor...
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In general we are going to see many of the holders of top NFT projects being present in other top collections. It’s a small world, but that’s even more the case in the young world of NFTs of the Optimism network.
In this report we will have a look at the crossover between the top 10 NFT collections by Market Capitalization and then fan out to explore their holder’s presence among the rest of the projects. In the process we’re hoping to gain a better understanding of the top performing collections, how tightly knit their communities are and their reach throughout the Optimism NFT world.
The collections we will be using for this analysis are the top 10 NFT collections based on their Market Cap. This will be calculated using the collection floor price at the time of publishing multiplied by the number of items in the collection.
Once we get past the crossover between these top 10 communities, we will be looking at all the other projects their users minted, purchased or held over the last 6 months.
All the data and underlying queries can be explored in the live dashboard below👇:
https://app.flipsidecrypto.com/dashboard/op-nft-communities-crossover-1N8-Nm
☝️ The dashboard can be updated on-demand by pressing the refresh button 🔄 in the top right corner of the page.
The leading NFT project, with almost twice the market cap of the runner-up, is Optipunks, a 10k pfp derrivative of the OG NFT collection of the Ethereum mainnet, CryptoPunks. Other projects that have started off on Optimism and enjoy a top 10 market cat are Apetimism, Bored Town and Motorheadz.
Many of the other collections we see in this ranking are related to Optimism free mints and rewards for being active network participants. Because they’re mostly awarded for surpassing certain activity thresholds on the network, we can see they generally have a much higher count of holders than the other projects.
The disparity of holders between projects also distorts the number of crossover holders in each collection. As many of those collections are awarded for being active, and some specifically for actively trading NFTs, there is no surprise that we have a lot of their holders crossing over and owning an item from at least one other top 10 projects.
In the case of the reward NFTs, the most common crossover bin holders fit in is 1. For the other projects, like Optipunk, Apetimism, Bored Town and Motorheadz, although they have fewer members, more of them own 2 or more other projects from the top 10.
Plotting the crossover of members in a scatterplot we can better visualize which communities have greater overlap and how they compare among each other. As expected, we can see that in most cases projects have a lot of members overlap with the reward projects, while community projects rank lower in terms of crossover.
One thing standing out is the crossover percentage of OP Orcas holders with Early Optimists. Over 70% of the OP Orcas holders, wallets that have spent 1 ETH on Quixotic, are among the 36k first traders of the marketplace.
Similarly, 65% of the OP Orcas holders have at least one OP Quest NFT, rewarded for completing various activities across the Optimism ecosystem.
The claiming process of the rewards NFTs we’ve seen already is actually a minting event. Therefore it’s unsurprising that many of the top projects holders have participated in the minting of at least one other project. In fact, when we put holders into mint count bins, we can see that most of them only minted one other project, while the rest fall in the higher bin of 1-10.
However, there are two collections that stand out with a large percentage of their holders, around 80%, participating in minting events. Those two are Motorheadz and OP Orcas.
Here we’re going to look at the purchases made by holders of the top 10 projects. Furthermore, we will check whether the mass buy-in signal coming from holders correlates with a higher floor price multiplier in the present compared to the price at the time of their purchase.
As a buy-in signal we will consider the first day when the holders of a top 10 project decide to purchase the NFTs of another collection. The proportion of project holders making the same move on the same date represents the signal strength in this case. Then, the floor price at the time of the signal is compared to the current floor price to decide whether the buy-in signal led to a POSITIVE or a NEGATIVE outcome.
In the first plot we can see that some of the greatest price multipliers were achieved when only a small proportion of the holders of a project buy-in into a collection, whereas when many know about the opportunity they were still able to achieve great results but only a lot less often than when they failed. This can be more clearly seen in the second scatterplot that color codes signals based on the outcome.
All of the top 10 projects and their holders have a buy-in signal success rate under 50%, with some of the worst success rates registered by OP Delegatoors and OP Quest holders. This is also perhaps because they are more likely to accommodate less experienced NFT traders since their initial distribution is specifically aimed at incentivising new users.
Simulating a scenario in which we purchase one NFT of each collection the top 10 collections holders did at the time of the signals we’ve explored above, we can check whether blindly following their moves could prove to be beneficial over the long term.
Although we’ve already seen that most of their signals had a negative outcome, it is still possible that the successful trades redeem all their mistakes and it’s certainly something that happens in other cases. In this situation however, the profitable signals were not sufficient to lift our scenario from under the water except for a few brief periods of time.
With all the minting and buying we’ve seen, it’s good to ask what are the holders doing with all the NFTs? Do they sell them? And if so, how long do they hold them before doing it?
There’s no significant difference between NFTs minted or purchased. In most cases, they’re never sold. When they are sold, it most often happens less than a month after it’s been acquired.
The leading NFT project by market cap is Optipunks, a CryptoPunks inspired 10k pfp collection. Many of the other top 10 projects are distributed as free mints for active Optimism network participants.
Most crossover can be observed between rewards collections, indicating that the campaigns are successful and engage users to interact with more of the ecosystem.
The collections with the most active holders in minting events are Motorheadz and OP Orcas. Across the top 10 collections, the majority of holders participated in just one minting event.
Holders of rewards projects have generated some of the most unsuccessful buy-in signals for other collections. However, all of the top 10 collections have success rates under 50% and following their holders’ buy-in signal did not prove to be a profit generating strategy over the long term.
After having minted or bought an NFT, the holders of the top 10 collections have generally kept them and never sold. When they did sold, they did so most often in less than 1 month after acquiring them.
In general we are going to see many of the holders of top NFT projects being present in other top collections. It’s a small world, but that’s even more the case in the young world of NFTs of the Optimism network.
In this report we will have a look at the crossover between the top 10 NFT collections by Market Capitalization and then fan out to explore their holder’s presence among the rest of the projects. In the process we’re hoping to gain a better understanding of the top performing collections, how tightly knit their communities are and their reach throughout the Optimism NFT world.
The collections we will be using for this analysis are the top 10 NFT collections based on their Market Cap. This will be calculated using the collection floor price at the time of publishing multiplied by the number of items in the collection.
Once we get past the crossover between these top 10 communities, we will be looking at all the other projects their users minted, purchased or held over the last 6 months.
All the data and underlying queries can be explored in the live dashboard below👇:
https://app.flipsidecrypto.com/dashboard/op-nft-communities-crossover-1N8-Nm
☝️ The dashboard can be updated on-demand by pressing the refresh button 🔄 in the top right corner of the page.
The leading NFT project, with almost twice the market cap of the runner-up, is Optipunks, a 10k pfp derrivative of the OG NFT collection of the Ethereum mainnet, CryptoPunks. Other projects that have started off on Optimism and enjoy a top 10 market cat are Apetimism, Bored Town and Motorheadz.
Many of the other collections we see in this ranking are related to Optimism free mints and rewards for being active network participants. Because they’re mostly awarded for surpassing certain activity thresholds on the network, we can see they generally have a much higher count of holders than the other projects.
The disparity of holders between projects also distorts the number of crossover holders in each collection. As many of those collections are awarded for being active, and some specifically for actively trading NFTs, there is no surprise that we have a lot of their holders crossing over and owning an item from at least one other top 10 projects.
In the case of the reward NFTs, the most common crossover bin holders fit in is 1. For the other projects, like Optipunk, Apetimism, Bored Town and Motorheadz, although they have fewer members, more of them own 2 or more other projects from the top 10.
Plotting the crossover of members in a scatterplot we can better visualize which communities have greater overlap and how they compare among each other. As expected, we can see that in most cases projects have a lot of members overlap with the reward projects, while community projects rank lower in terms of crossover.
One thing standing out is the crossover percentage of OP Orcas holders with Early Optimists. Over 70% of the OP Orcas holders, wallets that have spent 1 ETH on Quixotic, are among the 36k first traders of the marketplace.
Similarly, 65% of the OP Orcas holders have at least one OP Quest NFT, rewarded for completing various activities across the Optimism ecosystem.
The claiming process of the rewards NFTs we’ve seen already is actually a minting event. Therefore it’s unsurprising that many of the top projects holders have participated in the minting of at least one other project. In fact, when we put holders into mint count bins, we can see that most of them only minted one other project, while the rest fall in the higher bin of 1-10.
However, there are two collections that stand out with a large percentage of their holders, around 80%, participating in minting events. Those two are Motorheadz and OP Orcas.
Here we’re going to look at the purchases made by holders of the top 10 projects. Furthermore, we will check whether the mass buy-in signal coming from holders correlates with a higher floor price multiplier in the present compared to the price at the time of their purchase.
As a buy-in signal we will consider the first day when the holders of a top 10 project decide to purchase the NFTs of another collection. The proportion of project holders making the same move on the same date represents the signal strength in this case. Then, the floor price at the time of the signal is compared to the current floor price to decide whether the buy-in signal led to a POSITIVE or a NEGATIVE outcome.
In the first plot we can see that some of the greatest price multipliers were achieved when only a small proportion of the holders of a project buy-in into a collection, whereas when many know about the opportunity they were still able to achieve great results but only a lot less often than when they failed. This can be more clearly seen in the second scatterplot that color codes signals based on the outcome.
All of the top 10 projects and their holders have a buy-in signal success rate under 50%, with some of the worst success rates registered by OP Delegatoors and OP Quest holders. This is also perhaps because they are more likely to accommodate less experienced NFT traders since their initial distribution is specifically aimed at incentivising new users.
Simulating a scenario in which we purchase one NFT of each collection the top 10 collections holders did at the time of the signals we’ve explored above, we can check whether blindly following their moves could prove to be beneficial over the long term.
Although we’ve already seen that most of their signals had a negative outcome, it is still possible that the successful trades redeem all their mistakes and it’s certainly something that happens in other cases. In this situation however, the profitable signals were not sufficient to lift our scenario from under the water except for a few brief periods of time.
With all the minting and buying we’ve seen, it’s good to ask what are the holders doing with all the NFTs? Do they sell them? And if so, how long do they hold them before doing it?
There’s no significant difference between NFTs minted or purchased. In most cases, they’re never sold. When they are sold, it most often happens less than a month after it’s been acquired.
The leading NFT project by market cap is Optipunks, a CryptoPunks inspired 10k pfp collection. Many of the other top 10 projects are distributed as free mints for active Optimism network participants.
Most crossover can be observed between rewards collections, indicating that the campaigns are successful and engage users to interact with more of the ecosystem.
The collections with the most active holders in minting events are Motorheadz and OP Orcas. Across the top 10 collections, the majority of holders participated in just one minting event.
Holders of rewards projects have generated some of the most unsuccessful buy-in signals for other collections. However, all of the top 10 collections have success rates under 50% and following their holders’ buy-in signal did not prove to be a profit generating strategy over the long term.
After having minted or bought an NFT, the holders of the top 10 collections have generally kept them and never sold. When they did sold, they did so most often in less than 1 month after acquiring them.
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