MEV: The Hidden Crypto Economy

What you'll learn

• The Dark Forest
• Types of MEV Extraction
• Protecting Yourself

Key terms

MEV (Maximal Extractable Value)

Profit extractable by reordering, including, or excluding transactions in a block. Originally "Miner Extractable Value"; renamed post-Merge for PoS context.

Sandwich attack

A bot front-runs a target swap with a buy, lets the swap execute (pushing price up), then sells. Costs the victim slippage. Documented Solana sandwich profits: $370-500M Jan 2024-May 2025.

Front-running

Placing a transaction ahead of another known pending transaction by paying higher fees. Profitable when the target transaction will move prices.

Flashbots

Research/dev collective founded 2020 by Stephane Gosselin and Phil Daian. Built MEV-Boost, used by ~90% of Ethereum validators. Cumulative ETH MEV >$1.8B by mid-2025.

MEV-Boost

Implementation of Proposer-Builder Separation (PBS). Validators outsource block construction to a competitive builder market via trusted relays.

Builder market

Specialized firms that construct profitable blocks and bid to validators. Titan Builder dominates April 2026 (~52%); BuilderNet (~25%); Quasar (~15%).

JIT (Just-In-Time) Liquidity

Unique to Uniswap v3: bot mints concentrated liquidity right before a large swap, captures fees, burns position immediately. Dilutes existing LPs ~85% on average.

CowSwap / 1inch Fusion

Intent-based DEXs. Batch orders for ~30 seconds, auction settlement to competing solvers. Uniform clearing prices make ordering irrelevant.

MEV Blocker

CoW DAO public RPC routing through trusted builders. 100% protection from front-running/sandwich. Shares 90% of winning searcher's bid back to user.

Jito (Solana)

Dominant Solana MEV infrastructure. Cumulative tips paid to stakers/validators: $674M through end-2024. ~93% of Solana validators run Jito software.