Finding Arbitrage on Emerging Chains — A KAIA Case Study

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Earlier I said arbitrage on major chains is hard—MEV bots dominate the public mempool. So flip the script: what if we move to a less-crowded market? I ported my BSC arb bot to an emerging EVM chain (KAIA). Here's what stayed, what changed, and what hurts.

Why Emerging, Low-Competition Chains?

Major chains are MEV battlegrounds. Emerging ones are different:

• Immature MEV infrastructure — sophisticated front-running bots are rare; public mempool contention is gentler
• Fragmented DEX ecosystem — liquidity scattered across small DEXs; price gaps persist longer
• Oracle/price delays — weak unified routing; pool discrepancies happen often

The flip side: liquidity is shallow. Volume is thin. "Less competition" and "more money" are different stories.

EVM Compat — What Transfers As-Is

The biggest win: EVM compatibility. If the target is EVM, much of your bot reuses directly:

• Solidity contracts — router, scanner, adapter .sol is compatible at bytecode level; just redeploy
• Adapter logic — if the target's major DEXs are UniV2/V3 forks or known forks (Wombat/Capybara), existing adapters work immediately
• Off-chain scan engine — path search, simulation, profit gates are chain-agnostic
• Dashboard, alerts — web UI and Telegram are unrelated to which chain

The fact that most new chain DEXs are verified forks is critical. A Wombat fork means you wire Wombat adapter to it; no rewrite.

What Needs Rewriting — Chain-Specific Constants

Clear line: anything bound to a chain.

// 1) Chain ID (EIP-155)

chainID := big.NewInt(8217) // BSC was 56 → new chain value

// 2) RPC endpoints

var rpcURLs = []string{

    "https://public-en.node.example",

    "https://rpc2.example",

    // Multi-RPC rotation pattern stays; just update addresses

}

// 3) Key token addresses (wrapped native, stablecoins)

//    - WKAIA (wrapped native), USDT/USDC, etc. — all different per chain

//    - Bridge tokens (oUSDT, oUSDC) often become the actual pair standard

One production gotcha: price oracle for USD conversion. On BSC I used PancakeSwap router to quote gas in USD. The target chain needs a canonical router. Until you pick one, the bot runs but USD math returns zero. "Build succeeds but numbers look wrong" usually traces back to an unmapped constant like this.

Porting Checklist

Order from actual migrations:

1. Fork skeleton — copy source, exclude runtime (logs, build, keys)
2. Module/import paths — arbitrage-bot → chain-arbitrage-bot
3. Chain ID global search — find every hardcoded ID across entry points
4. RPC, tokens, stables — replace with research-verified real addresses
5. Redeploy contracts — push router, scanner, adapters to target chain
6. Generate token/pair JSON — populate scan roster
7. Paper trade — mandatory simulation before live

Critical: token and contract addresses you put on the list must be verified directly on the block explorer. Don't trust research docs blindly; you'll end up scanning counterfeit tokens or defunct contracts. (Obviously this post contains only placeholders, not real addresses.)

Emerging Market Risks

• Shallow liquidity — slippage limits your scale
• Token reliability — rug pulls and fee-on-transfer tokens hide in the list; blacklist management is essential
• Infrastructure fragility — public RPC nodes die frequently; multi-RPC rotation is mandatory, not optional
• Ecosystem volatility — major DEX vanishes or loses liquidity overnight

Summary

• Emerging, low-MEV markets preserve price gaps longer, but liquidity is thin
• EVM compat means contracts, adapters, scan engine, UI mostly reuse
• Only chain-specific constants—ID, RPC, token addresses, price oracle router—need rework
• Shallow liquidity, token risk, infrastructure gaps, ecosystem instability are the real costs

The "move to less crowded markets" strategy works. You pay for it by handling the ecosystem's immaturity directly. But a well-designed reusable framework makes that cost manageable.

This is educational material, not investment advice. Emerging chain automation carries heightened risk of total loss. You alone are responsible for outcomes.