MEV ISN’T JUST ABOUT SANDWICH ATTACKS.
It’s about who gets to decide what happens first.
Maximal Extractable Value exists because blockchains must order transactions.
When users broadcast transactions, searchers look for profitable opportunities. Builders decide which transactions enter a block and in what order. Validators or proposers ultimately approve the block.
That creates a market around transaction ordering.
Some MEV is productive.
• DEX arbitrage helps keep prices aligned
• Liquidations help DeFi protocols remain solvent
• Cross venue arbitrage improves market efficiency
The problem isn’t MEV itself.
The problem is who controls the ordering layer and how the extracted value is distributed.
The MEV Supply Chain
Users create transaction intent.
Searchers identify opportunities.
Builders construct profitable blocks.
Relays coordinate block delivery and auctions.
Proposers select the winning block.
Every layer can capture value.
That is why MEV has increasingly become an infrastructure problem.
Flashbots Changed the Game
Before private bundle infrastructure, MEV competition often created gas wars, failed transactions, congestion, and an increasingly hostile public mempool environment.
Flashbots helped move this competition into a more structured marketplace.
But MEV didn’t disappear.
The bottleneck simply moved upstream.
From bots → to builders → to orderflow → to sequencing infrastructure.
And that creates a new set of risks:
• Builder concentration
• Orderflow centralization
• Censorship concerns
• Sequencer dependence
• Information leakage across chains
So the future MEV debate is not simply:
“How do we stop bots?”
It is:
“How should transaction ordering work?”
That opens the door to orderflow auctions, encrypted mempools, programmable privacy, enshrined PBS, better sequencer designs, and more transparent value distribution.
The sandwich is the symptom.
Sequencing is the infrastructure.
MEV is the market.
The real question is:
Who gets to decide what happens first?
It’s about who gets to decide what happens first.
Maximal Extractable Value exists because blockchains must order transactions.
When users broadcast transactions, searchers look for profitable opportunities. Builders decide which transactions enter a block and in what order. Validators or proposers ultimately approve the block.
That creates a market around transaction ordering.
Some MEV is productive.
• DEX arbitrage helps keep prices aligned
• Liquidations help DeFi protocols remain solvent
• Cross venue arbitrage improves market efficiency
The problem isn’t MEV itself.
The problem is who controls the ordering layer and how the extracted value is distributed.
The MEV Supply Chain
Users create transaction intent.
Searchers identify opportunities.
Builders construct profitable blocks.
Relays coordinate block delivery and auctions.
Proposers select the winning block.
Every layer can capture value.
That is why MEV has increasingly become an infrastructure problem.
Flashbots Changed the Game
Before private bundle infrastructure, MEV competition often created gas wars, failed transactions, congestion, and an increasingly hostile public mempool environment.
Flashbots helped move this competition into a more structured marketplace.
But MEV didn’t disappear.
The bottleneck simply moved upstream.
From bots → to builders → to orderflow → to sequencing infrastructure.
And that creates a new set of risks:
• Builder concentration
• Orderflow centralization
• Censorship concerns
• Sequencer dependence
• Information leakage across chains
So the future MEV debate is not simply:
“How do we stop bots?”
It is:
“How should transaction ordering work?”
That opens the door to orderflow auctions, encrypted mempools, programmable privacy, enshrined PBS, better sequencer designs, and more transparent value distribution.
The sandwich is the symptom.
Sequencing is the infrastructure.
MEV is the market.
The real question is:
Who gets to decide what happens first?