CashboardGlossary · Onchain
What is MEV?
MEV, or maximal extractable value, is the extra profit from choosing which transactions go into a block and in what order, beyond normal fees and rewards.
How does MEV work?
A block is a queue, and the order is worth money. If a large swap is about to push a token's price up, a bot that buys just before it and sells just after gets paid by the swapper. The usual sources, per ethereum.org, are DEX arbitrage, liquidations on lending markets and sandwich trades like that one. The name dates from proof of work, when it stood for miner extractable value.
On Ethereum the work is split up. Searchers run bots that find the trades, builders pack them into complete blocks and bid for the right to have them proposed, and the validator whose turn it is takes the highest bid through a relay without seeing inside the block. That setup, MEV-Boost, lives outside the protocol. The Glamsterdam upgrade schedules EIP-7732, enshrined proposer-builder separation, to move that handoff into Ethereum itself. In September 2026 it had a Sepolia test date of October 6 and no mainnet date.
Part of that money ends up with stakers, which is one reason staking yield is more than new issuance. For traders the defenses are dull, and they work. A private RPC such as Flashbots Protect keeps a swap out of the public mempool where sandwich bots watch, and a tight slippage limit caps what a sandwich can take. On L2s the sequencer sets the ordering rules instead: since April 2025 Arbitrum One has sold a 60-second express lane in a sealed-bid auction called Timeboost, while everyone else's transactions wait an extra 200 milliseconds.
Take a made-up $10,000 swap into a thin token with 3% slippage allowed. A bot buys first and moves the price 2%, your swap fills about $200 worse than quoted, and the bot sells right after into the price you pushed up. With a 1% limit the swap would have failed instead, costing you only gas.
Also called: maximal extractable value, miner extractable value.
Where does MEV show up in Cashboard?
The Ethereum pulse counts MEV in one place. Its Protocol APR tile adds the issuance, tips and MEV rates ultrasound.money reports, and hovering the figure says Issuance + tips + MEV. Lido stETH APR sits beside it, and Lido's validators send their tips and MEV to a Lido vault that feeds stETH. Cashboard does not measure MEV itself or flag a sandwiched trade. Its own code never sends a transaction, so it cannot shield one either. A swap you start on the web runs in Jupiter's or LI.FI's form and is signed by your own wallet, so any protection comes from that form's settings. On Solana, Solana pulse shows what landed Jito bundles tipped validators, at the median, p95 and p99.
Frequently asked questions
Is MEV bad for traders?
Some of it. Arbitrage keeps DEX prices in line and quick liquidations make sure lenders get paid back, but a sandwich leaves the trader in the middle with more slippage and a worse fill. A private RPC and a tight slippage limit are the usual defenses.
Do Ethereum stakers earn MEV?
Yes. The builder of a block pays the validator that proposes it, and that payment is the validator's share of the block's MEV. ultrasound.money reports it as its own APR, and the Ethereum pulse adds it to issuance and tips in the Protocol APR tile. stETH holders get theirs through Lido, after its 10% fee.
Related terms
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