How Does Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) Relate to Front-Running in Decentralized Finance?

MEV is the profit validators or miners can extract by arbitrarily including, excluding, or reordering transactions within a block. Front-running is a form of MEV where a malicious actor sees a profitable pending transaction in the mempool and inserts their own transaction immediately before it by paying a higher gas fee.

This allows them to profit from the price change caused by the original, larger trade. Solutions like Flashbots and private transaction relays are designed to mitigate MEV-based front-running.