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SoK: MEV Countermeasures

Published: 19 November 2024 Publication History

Abstract

Blockchains offer strong security guarantees, but they cannot protect the ordering of transactions. Powerful players, such as miners, sequencers, and sophisticated bots, can reap significant profits by selectively including, excluding, or reordering user transactions. Such profits are called Miner/Maximal Extractable Value or MEV. MEV bears profound implications for blockchain security and decentralization. While numerous countermeasures have been proposed to mitigate the negative effects of MEV, there is no agreement on the best solution. Moreover, solutions developed in academic literature differ quite drastically from what is widely adopted by practitioners. For these reasons, this paper systematizes the knowledge of existing MEV countermeasures. The contribution is twofold. First, we present a comprehensive taxonomy of 32 proposed MEV countermeasures, covering four different technical directions. Second, we summarize four security problems caused by MEV and examine whether different MEV countermeasures can effectively address these problems. Our work also helps identify directions for future research on MEV and MEV mitigation.

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  • (2024)Maximal extractable value: Current understanding, categorization, and open research questionsElectronic Markets10.1007/s12525-024-00727-x34:1Online publication date: 3-Oct-2024

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cover image ACM Conferences
DeFi '24: Proceedings of the Workshop on Decentralized Finance and Security
November 2024
37 pages
ISBN:9798400712272
DOI:10.1145/3689931
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution International 4.0 License.

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Published: 19 November 2024

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  1. decentralized finance
  2. ethereum
  3. miner/maximal extractable value

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  • (2024)Maximal extractable value: Current understanding, categorization, and open research questionsElectronic Markets10.1007/s12525-024-00727-x34:1Online publication date: 3-Oct-2024

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