MEV Bot Yoink Beats Hacker to $7.8M rsETH Haul [2026]

A hacker spent effort setting up an exploit against a Safe smart-contract wallet on Ethereum. On September 15, 2026, the attack fired, and within the same block another program grabbed the loot first. The bot, tagged on-chain as “Yoink,” paid roughly 18.93 ETH (about $46,000) to a block builder to jump the queue, then walked off with 2,900 rsETH worth close to $7.8 million. The original hacker got nothing.

The incident, confirmed by blockchain security firm Blockaid and reported by Cointelegraph and Unchained Crypto, has turned into one of the more debated crypto security stories of September 2026. It touches nearly every pressure point in decentralized finance right now: Safe wallet module risk, Uniswap v4 hook abuse, and the growing power of maximal extractable value (MEV) bots to act as accidental, or opportunistic, guardians of other people’s money. Five months earlier, a related protocol suffered one of the year’s biggest hacks. Now Kelp DAO’s rsETH token is back in the cryptocurrency headlines, this time as the asset a bot saved rather than the asset an attacker took.

What Happened on September 15: Inside the Safe Wallet Drain

The target was a Safe multisig wallet holding a leveraged rsETH position, structured through Aave’s wrapped token, aEthrsETH. According to Blockaid’s analysis, cited by Cointelegraph, the wallet had previously authorized a custom liquidity module tied to Uniswap v4. That module was meant to help manage the position automatically. It became the entry point for the attacker instead.