Trader swaps 1,126 ETH for 5,776 LIT in nearly $2 million loss

A wallet flagged by Lookonchain exchanged 1,126.44 ETH worth about $2.01 million for 5,776 LIT, paying an implied price of roughly $348 per token versus a market price near $2.46-$2.60 at the time and leaving the position worth only around $14,000. GoPlus Security said the loss stemmed from a router path that sent 1,116.8661 ETH through a low-liquidity AVAIL/WETH pool on Uniswap V3, creating what it described as a textbook same-block backrun extraction rather than a classic sandwich attack. GoPlus said the trader first received 6.68 million AVAIL at an inflated price, then the route converted the proceeds into about 14,508 USDC and finally into 5,775.66 LIT on Uniswap V4. Within the same block, a backrunning searcher spent about 0.3942 WETH to buy 2,154 AVAIL elsewhere and sold it into the distorted pool, extracting approximately 1,072.46 WETH; GoPlus said 1,018.25 ETH was then transferred to Titan Builder as a builder payment. The firm said the victim bought AVAIL at roughly 120 times the price later realizable in the market, leaving the final LIT position worth roughly $14,500. Crypto trader Ruslan Khairullin said the episode showed why users should inspect transaction routes before confirming DEX trades. DefiLlama data cited in the report showed Titan Builder has generated about $112.6 million in revenue from block-building services this year, including roughly $34 million in arbitrage profits during a separate CoW Protocol MEV incident in March. The incident came as Lighter's LIT token was surging after a tokenomics overhaul announced on July 1 that converts revenue-funded buybacks into permanent burns and shifts staking rewards from exchange revenue to ecosystem reserves. Lighter said it had repurchased about 15.5 million LIT, roughly 6.3% of circulating supply, since launch; the older report said a first burn of 15.5 million LIT occurred on July 2, while the newer report said the first burn was planned for the weeks after the second quarter closes. Lighter is targeting a 6% annualized staking yield, funded from its remaining 250 million LIT ecosystem allocation.