Invisible Raids on Ethereum: MEV Bots Have Siphoned Off $2 Billion Over 5 Years

[Coin World] Since 2020, traders on Ethereum have been fleeced by MEV Bots for nearly $2 billion. These Bots monitor the memory pool for pending transactions, jumping in line to execute before you — does it sound abstract? A poor guy was sandwiched and lost $714,000 within minutes; this is the bloody reality.

The consequences of this gameplay are very direct: the slippage protection you set is essentially nonexistent, limit orders inexplicably fail, and price execution is completely out of your control. For institutional funds that require precise execution of large transactions, this uncertainty is simply a nightmare.

Currently, there are some makeshift measures such as private memory pools on the market, but they only treat the symptoms and not the root cause. The real solution must start from the consensus layer—encrypting the content before transaction execution to prevent these front-running Bots from having any opportunities. Only in this way can DeFi rid itself of the “dark forest” label and truly become a game that institutions are willing to participate in.