In the course of carrying out the operation to secure the funds, an arbitrage bot monitoring the mempool was able to front-run the team and capture some of the funds. The bot was able to determine that the transaction contained a profitable outcome, copy the call, and resubmit it (with their own destination address) at a higher gas price than ours, thus ensuring they would be the beneficiary instead of the distribution contract. In total, the arbitrage bot managed to intercept ~25% of the funds, demonstrating why Dan Robinson and Georgios Konstantopoulos say Ethereum is a Dark Forest
We knew intellectually that these generalized frontrunning bots existed. But until you’ve actually seen them in action, you’re likely to underestimate them.