In Q3 of this year, how hot is the business of MEV bots? To sum it up in one sentence—profits have surged by 280% year-over-year, with quarterly earnings reaching $430 million. Behind this number lies a hidden concern in the DeFi market.

According to the latest industry data, the specific distribution of MEV profits is quite interesting: sandwich attacks are the main force, accounting for 62% of the share, which translates to $267 million in real money. These attacks mainly target retail traders on major DEXs and platforms like Pancake. Arbitrage trading follows closely, accounting for 28%, with profits of $120 million, based on a simple core logic—buying low and selling high across different DEXs to capture the spread. Liquidation front-running, though the smallest at only 10%, still brings in $43 million in profit and should not be underestimated.

This surge in MEV profits has clearly stimulated the nerves of ecosystem participants. A leading protocol has launched the SUAVE testnet, attempting to "democratize" MEV through a unified auction mechanism, making value extraction no longer the exclusive domain of bots. Uniswap V4 is also not idle, embedding MEV protection directly into the protocol layer to plug vulnerabilities at the source.

Interestingly, there are voices in the industry questioning the very goal of "completely eliminating MEV." Some researchers believe that the existence of MEV is closely related to network security, and completely zeroing it out might actually cause problems. A more pragmatic idea is—rather than eliminating MEV, make its distribution fairer. This approach seems to be the direction for many protocols' future improvements.