Enter the MEV Void: the Rise of Flashbots

MEV is all about exploiting the privilege of being able to include, exclude, re-order, or insert transactions into the next block.

Buuuuut of course shady trading bots also come with their downsides. Various MEV strategies can result in greater slippage (worse prices) on token swaps, failed transactions because trades were front-run, and have historically contributed to higher gas prices for all users as bots spammed the network with transactions.

MEV is the potential profit that’s available to whoever builds the blocks in a blockchain.

Profit-maximizing strategies can be benign (e.g. builders prioritizing transactions that offer fees for being included) or more problematic (e.g. if the builder observes a profitable trade, they can front-run it by including their own copy of the transaction first).