MEV on Solana
The profit searchers extract by reordering, inserting, or frontrunning transactions within a block. On Solana, MEV flows primarily through Jito's bundle auction rather than public mempool sandwiching.
In detail
MEV (maximal extractable value) is the economic profit block producers and specialized searchers can extract by controlling the ordering of transactions. On Ethereum, MEV is primarily sandwich attacks and arb bots running against the public mempool. On Solana, the landscape is different: there's no true public mempool — transactions flow through validators and through the Jito bundle auction. This means MEV on Solana is predominantly about getting your bundle accepted before competitors, and protecting yourself means submitting as a bundle rather than as a naked transaction. Copy trading is especially exposed to MEV because the mirror pattern is observable: target buys, you buy predictably 800ms later. Without bundle protection, you get sandwiched.
Key points
- On Solana, MEV flows through Jito bundle auctions
- Sandwich attacks are the main retail-facing MEV risk
- Copy trading is particularly exposed due to predictable patterns
- Bundle submission (Jito) is the primary defense
- Public-RPC-only trades are fully exposed to MEV