◽Downsides MEV

If you’re a miner, you could see a potential profitable transaction in the mempool and create a similar transaction for yourself, then include it into the next block you mine and profit from it before the original transaction is even confirmed. A practice known as front-running, that causes losses for users who are in the know.

Malicious types of MEV, such as front-running, are always done by bots that scan the mempool for potentially profitable transactions and in order to replicate them with a higher gas price so that they jump the queue. This overload can lead to congestion and raise gas prices significantly for everyone else waiting to have their order confirmed.

Sandwiching, another malicious type of MEV, is when MEV bots front-run a large transaction to bump up the price of an asset, then execute their own transaction before dumping their tokens, resulting in an undeniably worse trade for the original transaction.

Personal safety measures

There are several ways that you, as a user, can mitigate the impact of MEV. Some include avoiding low liquidity pools, never using high slippage, never setting the gas fee too high, and placing smaller orders if possible.