TL;DR
MEV (Maximal Extractable Value) is the profit that can be extracted by reordering, inserting, or censoring transactions within a block. On Solana, MEV primarily manifests as sandwich attacks and backrunning on DEX trades.
Unlike Ethereum’s public mempool, Solana doesn’t have a traditional mempool — transactions go directly to the current block leader. However, MEV still exists through Jito’s block builder infrastructure and validator-level transaction reordering. Searchers (bots that extract MEV) monitor pending transactions and submit bundles through Jito to guarantee their transactions land in a specific order relative to a target trade.
The most common form of MEV on Solana. A sandwich bot detects your pending swap on a DEX (e.g., Jupiter or Raydium), places a buy order before yours to push the price up (frontrun), lets your trade execute at a worse price, then immediately sells to capture the difference (backrun). The victim pays more slippage than expected, and the bot pockets the spread. On Solana’s fast chain, this happens in the same block.
Beyond sandwiches, Solana MEV includes arbitrage (profiting from price differences between DEXs), liquidation sniping (being first to liquidate undercollateralized positions), and NFT mint sniping. Backrun-only MEV (trading after a large swap to capture the price impact) is generally considered less harmful since it doesn’t worsen the original trader’s execution.
Use low slippage settings on swaps. Trade through MEV-protected RPC endpoints or trading bots that route through Jito bundles to prevent frontrunning. Many Solana trading bots listed on MadeOnSol include built-in MEV protection. Jupiter’s swap aggregator also offers MEV-protected transaction modes. For large trades, consider splitting into smaller amounts to reduce your MEV exposure.