How Do “Dark Pools” in Traditional Finance Compare to Private Mempools in DeFi?

Dark pools are private, off-exchange trading venues in traditional finance where large institutional orders are executed without being publicly displayed, minimizing market impact. Private mempools in DeFi serve a similar function by allowing large crypto transactions to be submitted and executed without passing through the public mempool.

Both mechanisms address the problem of transaction visibility and the resulting front-running, but dark pools are regulated trading systems, while private mempools are a technical solution on a decentralized network.