The unluckiest person in the world has been crowned today—what does it feel like to lose $50 million in an instant? Early this morning (most likely a foreigner), they made a move: using $50.43M worth of aETHUSDT on Aave to swap for 327 AAVE. The average cost per AAVE? $36,297. Market price? $112. That’s 30x the market price. At first glance, it seemed like an MEV attack sandwiching them, but after a closer look, it’s more likely due to Aave’s on-chain liquidity pool (especially the swap paths within Aave or CoW protocol) being nowhere near deep enough for a $50M trade. Dropping such a massive order all at once basically drained all the liquidity in the pool + pushed into price ranges with terrible depth, resulting in an effective execution price approaching infinity (slippage close to 100%). Aave’s team issued a warning at the time, but this guy confirmed the transaction on his phone, and with a high (or default) slippage tolerance setting, the trade went through. In the end, 99% of the principal evaporated. If they’re using a phone, they’re definitely not some lobster messing around randomly. But seriously, who tf uses a phone to handle $50M? I don’t understand the world of the rich. Aave officially made $600K in fees from this one transaction. They’ve now said they’ll refund it all to this unlucky guy, but the rest is definitely gone for good. What a shit ୧୨