MEV was never an element of the design of Ethereum—instead, it was an emergent phenomenon, and one that surprised everyone in the crypto community. It went from theoretical to operational (and very profitable) after only a couple of years, raising issues around censorship and centralization. This week, Coin Metrics’ research team is releasing a research report on MEV, which is an additional source of income to validators, and a rapidly-growing niche within the Ethereum ecosystem.
MEV is a major consideration going forward for the design of the Ethereum protocol, and may prove to be an issue shared by all smart contract platforms. It is thus critical to understand the interests and logic that undergird MEV so that we can appreciate the impact over Ethereum’s security and the economics of validating. You can download our report, What is MEV anyway?—for free—below.
