Glossary
MEV
Maximal extractable value: the profit a block proposer (or aligned searcher) can capture by reordering, inserting, or censoring transactions in a block.
MEV is the surplus a block producer can pull out of the order flow they control. Classic examples: sandwiching a large DEX swap with a buy-then-sell, back-running a liquidation, or front-running an NFT mint.
Because the producer chooses transaction order, MEV is structural — it cannot be eliminated, only redistributed. Tooling like Flashbots, proposer-builder separation (PBS), and encrypted mempools tries to make the extraction more competitive and less harmful to users.