Mev snipe! It’s not clear exactly what started it all, but top Ethereum developers have been working on the practice of Maximum Extractable Value (MEV) — essentially, an advanced trading bot to front-run users’ transactions at the point of execution. On May 16, Ethereum core developer Peter Siraj tweeted his despair at the lack of progress in efforts to solve some of the blockchain’s most vexing problems. “Look, the banking system has been restructured,” he wrote. One of his talking points was that Ethereum has “glorified” MEV, ostensibly sarcastically stating, “It’s no use fighting MEV, so maybe we’d be better off relying hard on it.” (As chronicled in last week’s issue of “The Protocol,” even U.S. government officials now appear to consider MEV standard operating procedure on the blockchain.) Ethereum Foundation researcher Danklad Feist retweeted Siraj’s post with the following comment: “I’m not sure what the solution is, but I’m sure it’s a good idea to do it.” And I can’t tell you what the supposed solution is to allow local block producers to extract MEV. ” An exchange ensued, after which Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin chimed in, tweeting that he was “really proud that Ethereum does not have a culture of trying to prevent people from speaking their minds, even when they have very negative feelings about key things in the protocol and ecosystem.” Buterin, known for his lengthy writing, took a break from working on the project in Kenya to write a 3,000+ word essay detailing the issues, concluding with: “The tweet alludes to that.
