Introduction

Today, I brought on Dan Robinson and Georgios Konstantopoulos, who are both research partners at Paradigm. Together, we explore the topic of MEV, or “Miner Extractable Value”.

Blockchains like Ethereum have this dirty little secret that, while in most regards they are very decentralized, the ordering of transactions within a single block is actually completely in the hands of a single miner. They can insert their own transactions, rearrange those of users, or even censor them completely.

MEV describes how much value a miner can extract from users and other miners by using these powers to their advantage.

If you’ve never looked into MEV before, I think you’ll be both shocked and fascinated by the complexity and sophistication of the war that’s raging inside Ethereum’s memory pool. Enjoy

Dan Robinson https://twitter.com/danrobinson

Georgios Konstantopoulos https://twitter.com/gakonst

Hasu https://twitter.com/hasufl

Flash Boys 2.0 (Daian et al) https://pdaian.com/flashboys2.pdf