CryptoCurrency
MEV Is the Tax Nobody Voted For
MEV, or Maximal Extractable Value, is the quietest tax in crypto.
- No proposals.
- No governance vote.
- No disclosure page.
Yet every user pays it, whether they are swapping tokens, minting NFTs, liquidating positions, or bridging assets. If you have ever clicked “confirm” on a transaction, congratulations — you participated in the MEV economy.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: MEV is not a bug. It is a structural feature of how blockchains process transactions.
At its core, MEV exists because transactions are public before they are finalized. Validators and specialized actors known as searchers watch the mempool, identify profitable ordering opportunities, and rearrange transactions to extract value. Front-running, back-running, sandwich attacks — these are not edge cases. They are business models.
To the user, MEV shows up as worse execution. More slippage. Failed transactions. Higher gas fees. The UI might say “network congestion,” but what it often means is that someone smarter, faster, and better capitalized stepped in between you and the block.
Validators and searchers act as invisible middlemen.
❌ They do not provide liquidity.
❌ They do not take price risk.
❌ They do not improve user experience.
Yet they siphon value by controlling ordering — the most underappreciated choke point in blockchain systems. In traditional finance, this would look a lot like payment for order flow mixed with high-frequency trading, except here it is baked directly into the protocol layer. The industry response has been to rebrand. We now hear about “ethical MEV,” “good MEV,” or “MEV minimization.” Let’s be honest: ethical MEV is still MEV. Whether the value is extracted by a rogue searcher or routed through a sanctioned relay and shared with validators, the user is still paying. A cleaner pipeline does not change the economic reality — it just makes the optics more palatable.
Some argue that MEV is necessary to keep chains secure, that it subsidizes validators, and strengthens consensus. Maybe. But calling it a security budget does not make it less regressive. Power users can mitigate MEV with private RPCs, bundles, and custom tooling. Everyone else gets taxed at the worst possible moment — when they are already taking market risk.
This is why MEV remains underrated and, frankly, juicy. It is one of the largest wealth transfer mechanisms in crypto, hiding in plain sight. It shapes market structure, incentivizes centralization, and quietly decides who wins and who bleeds on-chain.
Until transaction ordering is no longer a profit center, MEV will remain the tax nobody voted for — and everyone pays.
