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The Anti-Sandwich tool by DeFi security provider, Hackless, is offering a safe way of swapping crypto assets and avoiding them being ‘sandwiched’. The solution is available for both individual users and DeFi platforms that run on Ethereum or BNB Chain and wish to enhance their security level. Anti-Sandwich has already proved effective for a play-to-earn platform and is now open to a wider audience.

What does Anti-Sandwich protect from?

Decentralized exchanges are gaining momentum since they allow users to stay in control of their funds. Yet, this doesn’t mean that these platforms are not vulnerable and face no risks of losing the funds of their users. Quite the opposite – recent data shows that they are still prone to hacks and exploits of different kinds. In 2022, the 10 largest exploits have seen $2.1B being stolen from crypto protocols.

Both DeFi protocols and individual users keep falling victim to skilful hackers who continuously invent sophisticated attacks and use new tactics to steal funds. Sandwich attacks are among such hacks. While this type of attack does not come up in the news too often, collective data shows quite alarming results of damage caused to unfortunate victims.

Between May 2020 and April 2022, a total of 457,691 sandwich attacks were detected with an average ROI above 4%, as calculated by a TarLogic report.

The newly introduced Anti-Sandwich tool helps fight these sandwich attacks on Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain by avoiding public mempools through directly submitting transactions to miners. In reference to DEX, a mempool is a waiting area for transactions that haven’t been added to a block and are still unconfirmed. These transactions are placed in a mempool that are then picked up by a miner who packages them into a block. It is also in a mempool that an exploiter can ‘look’ for transactions that need to be executed soon.

Every sandwich attack is performed in a few steps, which are as follows:

  • An attacker monitors the mempool to detect a high-value transaction.
  • An attacker buys a certain amount of the same token before a user’s transaction is executed to pump the price.
  • A user purchases the token at a higher price.
  • An attacker sells purchased assets at a higher price, pocketing the difference.

It takes only two transactions for an exploiter to earn quite a significant profit, stealing from unaware users.

Anti-Sandwich for DeFi protocols

The first client of the Anti-Sandwich solution – a play-to-earn project – has already integrated the Hackless customized widget on their platform offering their users a few benefits already:

  • Improved user experience, without the user ever leaving the platform for swapping a project token. Additionally, it averts any confusion with similar tokens among a myriad of currencies on DEXs.
  • Boosted security while averting potential sandwich attacks during swaps.

The Anti-Sandwich tool boasts of fast and easy integration via the NPM library, as well as offers brand customization.

Anti-Sandwich for every DeFi user

If you are a DeFi investor who wishes to avoid falling prey to sandwich attacks, you can make use of Anti-Sandwich by Hackless for individual users. The swapping widget is available on the project’s website and is pretty straight-forward to use.  It allows you to easily and safely swap cryptocurrencies in Ethereum and BSC networks by sending your transactions directly to miners. Since your transaction doesn’t reach the mempool, it never becomes visible to hackers and as a result, has no risk of becoming a target.

To protect your transaction from being sandwiched, you simply need to:

  • Connect your Metamask wallet.
  • Select the network and token that you wish to swap.
  • Sign the transaction. Once signed, it will automatically be submitted to private miners, avoiding the public mempool.

Anti-Sandwich widget by Hackless

During its beta version, Anti-Sandwich is completely free of charge to use and works for  Ethereum and BNB Chain.