Monad and MEV – Will It Be Different?

Understanding MEV

On Ethereum, MEV extraction often involves front-running, sandwich attacks, and arbitrage. According to Flashbots, MEV has exceeded $1.5 billion in captured value since 2020. While MEV can sometimes create efficiency (e.g., arbitrage equalizing prices), it often harms regular users through higher costs and predatory behavior.

Monad’s Validator Design

Monad employs a local mempool structure similar to Solana, rather than a global shared mempool like Ethereum. This means validators see transactions differently depending on network propagation. In practice, this limits some MEV strategies but doesn’t eliminate them entirely. Block builders can still reorder transactions once they’re in their pool.

Flashbots on Monad?

While Monad hasn’t officially announced a MEV mitigation strategy, it’s likely that systems similar to Flashbots or SUAVE could emerge. These protocols allow searchers to submit bundles of transactions directly to block builders, theoretically reducing harmful MEV while maintaining efficiency. The challenge will be adapting such systems to Monad’s parallel execution environment.

Opportunities and Risks

• Opportunities: Monad could design MEV markets from scratch, learning from Ethereum’s mistakes. This includes more transparent auction systems and user protections.
• Risks: If MEV is left unchecked, bots may dominate trading activity, especially in meme coin markets where users are most vulnerable.

Comparative Perspective

Solana has experienced growing MEV as its DeFi ecosystem matured. The launch of Jito (a MEV-aware client) helped mitigate some risks but also concentrated power among validators. Monad has the chance to build a more balanced solution by decentralizing MEV capture and redistributing it to users or validators more fairly.

Conclusion

MEV won’t disappear on Monad, but the design space is wide open. By learning from Ethereum and Solana, Monad can create a healthier MEV environment that balances efficiency with fairness. Whether it succeeds could determine how attractive Monad becomes to both developers and traders.