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A comment on The Problem with Ethereum. Parent comment

Re:The Problem with Ethereum by BLKNSLVR on Wednesday August 11, 2021 @02:25AM (#28138713)
My understanding of MEV was "Maximum Extractable Value", and to clarify: MEV is the process by which a miner takes advantage of their ability to view pending transactions so they can "front-run" (add their own transactions ahead of) the transactions of others, bumping up the costs for the transactions that come after theirs, thus "extracting maximum value" from their privileged position.

Using the original article author's analogy, the "working class" are adding their own percentage to the retail price and taking those profits home.

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Re:The Problem with Ethereum by chrisco255 on Wednesday August 11, 2021 @04:24AM (#28139416)
MEV began as Miner Extractable Value, but a lot of people are adopting Maximum so that they can keep the same acronym for proof of stake.

They typically don't have the on-chain analysis or skill to reorder the transactions in the highest extractable way, so people bid for these opportunities through side channels they signal the miner to do (off-chain) based on the mempool (backlog) of transactions. Miners profit from this activity and in some cases these profits exceed the 2ETH per block issuance. The class analogy is strained and doesn't fit at all. These are only possible because Ethereum has a rich application layer (and if anyone is 'working class' it's the users, devs and dapps on the chain). But these profits more than made up for any offset in EIP1559 losses.

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