Miner Extracted Value. The poetic term of Ethereum miners that lurk in the shadows of the mempool, look for large trades and frontrun them to profit for themselves. Imagine in the old days when people would have a seat on the stock exchange. Orders would come through. If they saw a large order to buy a certain stock, they could potentially place one of their own orders to buyat a lower price first. Then place the large order to buy and thus reap the rewards of the price increase from the larger order. MEV is similar. Miners are limited in what they can do, however in a given Ethereum block, they can change the order of transactions. They can also insert their own transactions in the block, e.g. before the other transactions. Honestly, it’s a hard to explain and a deeply technical dark art. But it is certainly fascinating and profitable.