What Is Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) and Its Relation to Front-Running?
Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) is the maximum value that can be extracted from block production beyond standard block rewards and gas fees by arbitrarily including, excluding, or reordering transactions within a block. Front-running is a common and profitable type of MEV.
Validators or specialized bots exploit the public mempool to execute trades that profit from the knowledge of pending transactions. While MEV includes other strategies, front-running is the most direct form of profiting from transaction ordering manipulation.