MEV Vulnerability

The susceptibility of DeFi protocols to value extraction by miners or validators through transaction reordering or insertion.

What is MEV Vulnerability?

Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) vulnerabilities allow searchers to profit by front-running trades, as in sandwich attacks where bots insert orders around a large swap, extracting $1.3 billion in losses by 2025. In AMMs, public mempools expose orders, enabling arbitrage MEV that closes price gaps but harms users.

Common attacks include frontrunning DEX swaps, with over $1 billion extracted annually, mitigated by private relays or designs like Dutch auctions.

ESMA reports arbitrage MEV aids efficiency across DEXs, but toxic forms like censorship require protocol fixes.