Explain the Concept of “Miner/validator Extractable Value” (MEV)

MEV is the profit that miners or validators can gain by arbitrarily including, excluding, or reordering transactions within the blocks they produce. This profit comes from activities like front-running, sandwich attacks, and liquidations.

It is a form of hidden transaction cost that is not paid to the protocol but extracted by the block producers, posing a risk to network fairness and stability.