Glossary
Time-Bandit Attack
A theoretical attack where a miner / validator re-mines past blocks to extract MEV that has since been realized — by reorganizing the chain to capture historical opportunities.
The time-bandit attack, named by the Flash Boys 2.0 paper, is the worst-case MEV scenario: a miner with enough hashrate or stake re-mines a past block (or several) to insert a transaction they now know would have been profitable.
The attack becomes more attractive as MEV grows: at some point, the expected profit from re-mining exceeds the expected profit from extending the tip. On Ethereum PoS, the post-Merge slot structure and finality reduce — but do not eliminate — the theoretical risk.