New Trends in MEV on Solana: The Rise of Atomic Arbitrage, but Profits Are Not Accessible to Everyone

Recently, a new trading model has emerged on the Solana blockchain—atomic arbitrage, which is gradually becoming one of the main sources of on-chain trading. With decentralized exchanges introducing personalized priority fee options and anti-trap measures, the traditional sandwich attack profits have significantly declined. As of May 6, the daily average earnings from sandwich attacks have dropped to 582 SOL, far below the level of 10,000 SOL a few months ago.

Data shows that the proportion of atomic arbitrage on the Solana blockchain has reached an astonishing level. On April 8th, the tip ratio contributed by atomic arbitrage was as high as 74.12%, and during other times, it generally remained above 50%. This means that currently, one out of every two transactions on the Solana blockchain could be atomic arbitrage.

Atomic arbitrage refers to executing multi-step arbitrage operations within a single on-chain transaction. A typical operation includes buying an asset at a low price on a decentralized exchange and then immediately selling it at a high price on another exchange within the same transaction. Since the entire process is encapsulated in a single atomic transaction, it inherently eliminates the counterparty risk and partial execution risk present in traditional cross-exchange arbitrage.

In the past month, on-chain atomic arbitrage on Solana has profited approximately 120,000 SOL (worth about 17 million USD). Among them, the address with the highest profit had a cost of only 128.53 SOL, with earnings reaching 14,129 SOL, yielding a return rate as high as 109 times. The largest single profit even reached 769 times, earning 1,354 SOL with an expenditure of just 1.76 SOL.

However, behind these impressive numbers lies a harsh reality. Among the 5656 atomic arbitrage bots currently recorded, the average profit per address is 24.48 SOL (approximately $3071), with an average cost of about $870. Although the monthly return rate can reach 352%, this only takes into account on-chain transaction costs, ignoring other necessary investments.

Atomic arbitrage also requires additional hardware conditions, such as private RPC and high-performance servers. The monthly cost of these devices may range from $150 to $500, and this is just the minimum threshold. To conduct arbitrage more quickly, servers with multiple IP addresses are usually needed.

In actual observation, it has been found that the profits of most participants are not ideal. A certain atomic arbitrage deployment platform shows that in the past week, only 15 addresses have profits exceeding 1 SOL, with the highest being 15 SOL, while most other addresses have profits of less than 1 SOL, and some even incurred losses. Considering the costs of servers and nodes, most bots on this platform may be in a state of loss.

The core of profit in atomic arbitrage lies in discovering arbitrage opportunities. High returns often come from seizing certain loopholes in trading pools with scarce liquidity, but such opportunities are extremely rare. With many bots simultaneously monitoring similar opportunities, occasional large arbitrage deals are more akin to winning the lottery.

Some developers package atomic arbitrage as a "guaranteed profit" business, offering a free version for novice users and taking a 10% profit share. They also charge subscription fees by assisting in setting up nodes and servers, and providing additional IP services. However, due to the lack of deep technical understanding among most users and the similarity of the arbitrage opportunity monitoring tools used, the actual profits are minimal, and may even fail to cover basic costs.

Unless equipped with unique arbitrage opportunity monitoring tools and high-performance equipment, most participants may just shift from being cut while trading coins to being scammed by server purchases and subscription fees. As more participants join, the probability of arbitrage failure is also increasing. A program with the highest returns currently has a trading failure rate of over 99%, and participants still need to pay on-chain fees.

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