Ethereum vs Solana: MEV Dynamics

Ethereum and Solana have fundamentally different MEV landscapes driven by their architectural differences — 12s block times with a public mempool vs 400ms block times with leader-forwarded transactions.

Comparison

Aspect	Ethereum	Solana
Block time	12 seconds	~400 milliseconds
Mempool	Public, transparent; all pending transactions observable	No traditional mempool; transactions forwarded directly to current leader
MEV supply chain	Mature: searchers → builders → relays → proposers (PBS)	Latency-game: first searcher to reach the leader wins
Sandwich attacks	Common; searchers observe pending swaps and construct sandwich bundles	Rare; no public mempool to observe; leader sequencing is near-instant
Primary MEV form	Arbitrage, liquidations, sandwich attacks via bundle construction	Latency arbitrage; co-location and fiber routes to leader nodes
Builder market	Concentrated; top builders (Beaverbuild, Titan, rsync) produce most blocks	No builder market; validators sequence directly
MEV revenue flow	Builder → proposer payment via relay auction; flows to stakers	No structured MEV auction; value captured by fastest searchers
Infrastructure race	Algorithmic: transaction simulation, bundle optimization, gas bidding	Hardware/networking: co-location, custom RPC, fiber topology

Analysis

Ethereum MEV is fought at the financial engineering layer (bundle construction, gas auctions, order flow markets). Solana MEV is fought at the infrastructure layer (latency to the leader, network topology). Both are highly competitive but reward different skill sets.