📕 What is MEV?
MEV (Maximal Extractable Value) is the hidden profit that miners and validators can extract by reordering, inserting, or censoring transactions within a block - often at your expense.
❓How it works:
🟣Every time you submit a transaction, it sits in the mempool, a public waiting room visible to everyone, including bots;
🟣MEV bots scan the mempool 24/7 looking for profitable opportunities, like front-running your DEX trade by jumping ahead of it and buying before you do;
🟣 The most common MEV attacks are sandwich attacks (buy before you, sell after you), arbitrage (exploiting price differences across DEXs), and liquidations (racing to liquidate undercollateralized positions first).
🧠 GEM take:
MEV is one of crypto's dirtiest secrets, where millions are extracted from regular users every year without them even knowing. Solutions like Flashbots, private mempools, and MEV-aware DEXs are emerging to fight back, but the war is far from over.