MEV Manifesto

Introduction

MEV (Maximal Extractable Value) has been loosely defined as the value that block proposers can permissionlessly extract by reordering, censoring, or inserting transactions.

MEV is central to Ethereum block production. As a result, today’s censorship issues are deeply intertwined with MEV research, and both will be discussed in this report. If you’d like my far more opinionated takes here, you can see my recent article.

This report is more of a factual primer focusing on:

• Overview – MEV strategies and their supply chain.
• Past – How Ethereum initially reacted to the rise of MEV and built around it.
• Present – Ethereum block production changed drastically with the Merge, and MEV was central in these design decisions.