MEV
Also: Miner Extractable Value, Maximal Extractable Value
mining · advanced
Profit a miner can extract beyond block subsidy and fees by reordering, inserting, or censoring transactions in the blocks they produce.
MEV is mostly an Ethereum-flavored concept — DEX arbitrage, sandwich attacks, liquidation racing — but it has a Bitcoin presence too. On Bitcoin, the simplest forms are out-of-band fee payments ("accelerator services"), and the Ordinals/inscriptions era introduced explicit fee-bidding for transaction ordering inside a block.
The harder version: a miner who controls a large share of hash rate can demand bribes to *not* censor a transaction, or to mine on top of a specific tip. The 2023–2024 Ocean Pool / MARA standoff showed pools willing to take public censorship positions.
Bitcoin has structural protections Ethereum lacks: no smart contracts means no atomic arbitrage between protocols within a block; no on-chain order books means no front-running per se. But the principle — that block producers can extract value beyond protocol rewards — applies everywhere.