Snipers Made $1.3M on Jesse Pollak’s Creator-Coin Debut on Base

Why It Matters

The flashblock exploit demonstrates a new front‑running vector on layer‑2 chains, raising concerns about market fairness and prompting regulators and platforms to reassess transaction ordering mechanisms as creator‑coin models gain traction.

Summary

Two automated traders, known as snipers, extracted more than $1.3 million in profit by exploiting Base’s newly introduced “flashblocks” micro‑block system during the debut of Jesse Pollak’s creator‑coin, JESSE. The 200‑millisecond flashblocks let bots spot the token‑deployment transaction and submit high‑fee buy orders that settled in the same on‑chain block, allowing them to acquire 26 % of the 500 million token supply within seconds. One sniper spent $191,000 on tokens and paid $44,000 in sequencer fees to secure a 7.6 % stake, ultimately netting over $600,000, while the second earned $619,600. JESSE launched with half its supply seeded into a liquidity pool, now trading at a $13.8 million FDV with $4.4 million in liquidity and $33.5 million in volume.