Mitigating MEV using trusted hardware#
An important problem faced by many cryptocurrencies today is called Maximal Extractable Value (MEV). Transactions are submitted in the clear, and they are prone to front-running and back-running attacks. Such attacks allow the arbitrager to make unfair profit, at the expense of the users who are forced to buy and sell at a less favorable price. Because of such MEV attacks, an offchain ecosystem has developed: block builders now sell favorable positions in the block to both arbitragers and users alike, leading to a centralization effect. Today, 80%-90% of the Ethereum blocks are produced by the largest two block builders [Yang et al.].