When you buy tokens on-chain, bots may be watching you from the moment you place your order.
For example, if you’re preparing to make a large purchase, a bot may spot your transaction before it’s officially added to the blockchain, buy ahead of you, and then sell to you once your transaction goes through.
This is commonly known as front-running and a sandwich attack.
#Aptos recently introduced an optional feature: an encrypted mempool.
The idea is easy to understand.
Previously, once your transaction entered the pending queue, others might be able to see what you were about to do. Now, with this feature enabled, transaction details are encrypted first and only decrypted after the transactions in the block have been ordered.
In other words, bots can’t easily see the details of your transaction in advance and target it with a front-run the way they could before.
Why does this matter?
Because MEV attacks aren’t just theoretical.
Over the past year, sandwich attacks on Ethereum reportedly cost traders around $60 million. Another set of figures for Solana also shows that related attacks have caused substantial trading losses.
Of course, an encrypted mempool doesn’t mean that every MEV problem has been solved. Its real-world effectiveness still needs to be verified, and wallets and apps will also need to support it.
But the approach is interesting:
Rather than making users go head-to-head with bots, we can reduce bots’ opportunities to see transactions in advance through the design of the system itself.
For people who trade on-chain regularly, this kind of protection is worth keeping an eye on.
For example, if you’re preparing to make a large purchase, a bot may spot your transaction before it’s officially added to the blockchain, buy ahead of you, and then sell to you once your transaction goes through.
This is commonly known as front-running and a sandwich attack.
#Aptos recently introduced an optional feature: an encrypted mempool.
The idea is easy to understand.
Previously, once your transaction entered the pending queue, others might be able to see what you were about to do. Now, with this feature enabled, transaction details are encrypted first and only decrypted after the transactions in the block have been ordered.
In other words, bots can’t easily see the details of your transaction in advance and target it with a front-run the way they could before.
Why does this matter?
Because MEV attacks aren’t just theoretical.
Over the past year, sandwich attacks on Ethereum reportedly cost traders around $60 million. Another set of figures for Solana also shows that related attacks have caused substantial trading losses.
Of course, an encrypted mempool doesn’t mean that every MEV problem has been solved. Its real-world effectiveness still needs to be verified, and wallets and apps will also need to support it.
But the approach is interesting:
Rather than making users go head-to-head with bots, we can reduce bots’ opportunities to see transactions in advance through the design of the system itself.
For people who trade on-chain regularly, this kind of protection is worth keeping an eye on.