Sandwiched and Silent: Behavioral Adaptation and Private Channel Exploitation in Ethereum MEV

How users adapt after being sandwiched remains unclear; this paper provides an empirical quantification. Using transaction level data from November 2024 to February 2025, enriched with mempool visibility and ZeroMEV labels, we track user outcomes after their n-th public sandwich: (i) reactivation, i.e., the resumption of on-chain activity within a 60-day window, and (ii) first-time adoption of private routing. We refer to users who do not reactivate within this window as churned, and to users experiencing multiple attacks (n>1) as undergoing repeated exposure. Our analysis reveals measurable behavioral adaptation: around 40% of victims migrate to private routing within 60 days, rising to 54% with repeated exposures. Churn peaks at 7.5% after the first sandwich but declines to 1-2%, consistent with survivor bias. In Nov-Dec 2024 we confirm 2,932 private sandwich attacks affecting 3,126 private victim transactions, producing 409,236 in losses and 293,786 in attacker profits. A single bot accounts for nearly two-thirds of private frontruns, and private sandwich activity is heavily concentrated on a small set of DEX pools. These results highlight that private routing does not guarantee protection from MEV extraction: while execution failures push users toward private channels, these remain exploitable and highly concentrated, demanding continuous monitoring and protocol-level defenses.