What Is a ‘Dark Pool’ in Traditional Finance and How Does It Relate to Private Crypto Relays?

In traditional finance, a dark pool is a private forum for trading securities that is not accessible to the public. Its main purpose is to allow institutional investors to execute large block trades without publicly revealing their intentions, thus preventing front-running and significant market impact.

Private crypto relays serve a similar function by creating a private channel for transactions to be sent directly to validators, bypassing the public mempool. Both mechanisms aim to reduce information leakage that could be exploited for front-running.