Question:

One of the core actors in the THORChain ecosystem are the “Traders” (). These traders swap at a high frequency to make a profit and are a key cog to helping balance prices on THORChain. We are taking a deep dive on these traders. \n

Identify the Ethereum arb bots and show their activity over time. How many are there? What is their average swap frequency and volume? Which tokens are they swapping? Are they interacting with synths or non-synths? How much profit are they making?

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Methodology:

• To get the bot details, any address transacting more than 6 times in a minute is considered as a bot on thorchain.swaps
• After getting the bot details, non bots were taken into consideration
• To get a count of such addresses, the distinct bots were taken into account and the first transaction made by them were looked into and then these were grouped by day
• Similarly, swap volume was calculated for these bots using the thorchain.swaps and compared against the non bots tabulated in step 2. Apart from swap volume, transactions and user count were also compared among bots and non-bots
• In a similar way as above, instead of comparing between bots and non-bots, the comparison was made between synths and non-synths
• To get the most popular strategies, the from asset, to asset and pool name were grouped together and ordered in a descending fashion by the number of interactions made
• To get the average frequency and swap volume of the bots, the swap volume was divided by the total entities transacting and so was the number of transaction by the total entities
• Lastly, to get the profit made, the swap from amount was summed and subtracted from the summed value of swap to amount and the difference and average differnce was taken

Definitions:

• Bot: A bot is an address which has made 7 or more transactions in less than a minute. Or, in other words, a bot takes less than 10 seconds for each transaction in a minute
• Activity: Activity here implies transactions and the amount of those transactions
• Bots would only refer to bots on the ETH network. That is, addresses which have transacted on the ETH network
• Strategy here is a combination of from-asset , to-asset and pool name based on the times they were invoked.

Summary:

We would be looking into the following charts in this dashboard:

• Daily and Cumulative Bot Addresses Joining Time
• Daily Swap Volume by Bots and non bots
• Cumulative Swap Volume by Bots and non bots
• More Bots or Users
• Who swaps more- Users or Bots?
• Which have more transactions between users and bots
• Daily Transactions by Bots and non bots
• Cumulative Transactions by Bots and non bots
• Daily Swap Volume by bots on synth vs non synth
• Cumulative Swap Volume by Bots on synth vs non synth
• More synth Bots or non synth ones?
• Who swaps more- Synth/Non-synth bots?
• Which have more transactions Synth/Non-synth bots
• Daily Transactions on synth vs non synth
• Cumulative Transactions on synth vs non synth
• Most Popular Pools by Strategy
• Total Interactions to asset grouped by from_asset
• Total Bots by pool (Only top 10)
• Average Swap Transaction per bot (per day)
• Average Swap Volume per bot
• Table showing the average profit over time along with the profits made by each bot

We would be looking at both explanation & visuals from time to time in the sections ahead:

Explanation & Insights:

• Only about 3.5% of all transactions by volume were synths while the rest were non synth transactions were by bots
• After June, there has been an increase in this number as 1 in 5 transactions were related to synths
• Currently, 1 in 3 transactions by bots involve synths among all transactions!
• About 5M$ was the total swap volume while the rest were non synths
• About 6% of all transactions were synths while the rest were non transactions
• This implies that synths have a lesser value by transaction

Explanation & Insights:

How many bots are there and the activity over time:

• There are a total of 10 bots on the Ethereum network which interact with Thorchain (specifically used thorchain.swaps).
• More than 150M$ worth of transactions took place only by bots
• As compared to users, bots are very few but they have a very high number of transactions
• Bots have been responsible for about 17% of total transactions on ETH network for swaps on Thorchain
• Bots account for less than 15% of all transactions
• In June, bots have been responsible for about 40% of the total transactions
• About 14k swap transactions took place by bots alone while this was about 5k in March 2022 vs non bots at 52k while now it’s at 14k transactions by bots and 79k by non bots

Explanation & Insights:

• The BNB.BUSD - THOR.RUNE had the most transactions by these bots with ETH being an intermediary among these transactions
• The next strategy was the use of ETH.ETH to THOR.RUNE
• Others in order are ETH.USDC, ETH.USDT, ETH.THOR to THOR.RUNE and vice-versa
• By Distribution of transactions, BUSD has the most followed by ETH.ETH and ETH.USDC
• By total bots, ETH.ETH has the most bots (since the comparison was made on ETH) followed by ETH.USDT, ETH.USDC, ETH.THOR and BNB.BUSD

Conclusions:

• It can be concluded that ETH is not a profitable chain to deploy your bots on given that a 94M$ volume fetched about 11k$ in profit while other chains and dex’s are more profitable

• It can also be concluded that :

  • There are about 10 bots on the ETH chain
  • These bots have made a transaction of about 500k$ swap on an average per day
  • The average swap transaction is less than 30 per day per bot
  • The average profit is at about 2.5k$ per bot
  • The maximum profit is at about 11k$ per bot
  • Swapping to RUNE, USDC, USDT or THOR is one of the popular strategies of these bots
  • They do not have any transaction on any ETH dex’s
  • Only about 3.5% of all transactions by volume were synths while the rest were non synth transactions were by bots
  • After June, there has been an increase in this number as 1 in 5 transactions were related to synths
  • Currently, 1 in 3 transactions by bots involve synths among all transactions!
  • About 5M$ was the total swap volume while the rest were non synths
  • About 6% of all transactions were synths while the rest were non transactions
  • This implies that synths have a lesser value by transaction
  • More than 150M$ worth of transactions took place only by bots
  • As compared to users, bots are very few but they have a very high number of transactions
  • Bots have been responsible for about 17% of total transactions on ETH network for swaps on Thorchain
  • Bots account for less than 15% of all transactions
  • In June, bots have been responsible for about 40% of the total transactions
  • About 14k swap transactions took place by bots alone while this was about 5k in March 2022 vs non bots at 52k while now it’s at 14k transactions by bots and 79k by non bots

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Explanation Continued:

Average transactions and swap volume:

• Bots do not transact until they find a profit and hence has about 30 transactions per day or less for every bot
• The average swap volume per bot comes to be at around 500k$
• The most profitable bot has made about 11.4k$
• The average profit made by the bots is at about 2.5k$ per bot!
• Notably, by volume the most volume is as high as 94M$
• This implies that Ethereum as a chain has a lot of fees and that compensates for the price