The maximum value that can be extracted from block production in excess of the standard block reward and gas fees by including, excluding, and changing the order of transactions in a block.

A trading strategy where a bot detects a large pending transaction and places its own transaction with a higher gas fee to get executed first, usually to buy a token before the price goes up.

A combination of front-running and back-running. The attacker buys before a victim's trade and sells immediately after, pocketing the price difference caused by the victim's slippage.

A research and development organization formed to mitigate the negative externalities of current MEV extraction techniques and avoid the existential risks MEV could cause to state-rich blockchains like Ethereum.

A communication channel that allows searchers to send transaction bundles directly to block builders/validators, bypassing the public mempool to avoid being front-run or having strategies simulated.

A collection of transactions grouped together and submitted to a block builder. Bundles are atomic, meaning either all transactions in the bundle are included in the block in the specific order, or none are.

The minimum gas price required to include a transaction in a block, determined by the protocol (EIP-1559). It is burned and not paid to validators.

An additional fee paid directly to the validator to incentivize them to prioritize your transaction over others.

An automated bot or entity that monitors the mempool for MEV opportunities and submits bundles to builders to capture that value.

A specialized actor that accepts bundles from searchers and constructs full blocks to maximize profit, which are then proposed by validators.

A "waiting room" for pending transactions that have been broadcast to the network but not yet included in a block.

The difference between the expected price of a trade and the price at which the trade is executed. MEV bots often exploit high slippage settings.

A strategy where a liquidity provider adds liquidity to a pool immediately before a large trade and removes it immediately after, capturing the trading fees.