Who Actually Profits From MEV Extraction?
Every transaction submitted to a blockchain sits briefly in a queue before it’s included in a block, and whoever controls that ordering can extract value from it. That value has a name, maximal extractable value, or MEV, and it flows to a specific set of technical participants rather than to the network as a whole.
The short answer
MEV is captured mainly by three overlapping groups: searchers who write automated programs to spot profitable reordering opportunities, block builders who assemble transactions into a block in the most profitable sequence, and validators who ultimately decide which assembled block gets added to the chain. Ordinary users submitting a normal transaction are typically on the losing end of the trade, not the earning end.
Searchers: the opportunity spotters
Searchers run automated bots that continuously scan pending transactions for patterns that can be profitably exploited, most commonly by inserting their own trades immediately before and after a target transaction. A common example is a sandwich, where a searcher buys an asset right before a large pending trade pushes its price up, then sells immediately after, profiting from the price movement the original trade caused. Searchers compete intensely with each other, often bidding fees to have their transaction ordered favorably, which is part of what makes this a specialized, technically demanding activity rather than something a casual user does incidentally.
Builders: the assemblers
In many networks today, the job of choosing exactly how to order a block’s transactions has been split off into a separate role called a builder. Builders take bids from searchers who want specific transaction placements and compete with other builders to assemble the most profitable overall block. The most profitable version is then offered to whoever is producing that block.
Validators: the final gatekeepers
The validator responsible for that block chooses which builder’s proposed block to accept, typically the most profitable one offered, and receives a payment for doing so. This is a legitimate, protocol-recognized part of how validators earn rewards in proof of stake systems on many networks; MEV-related payments have become a meaningful and expected component of total validator income, not an edge case.
Who tends to lose
Before looking at specific groups, it helps to ask whether MEV affects regular crypto users directly at all, since the honest answer is that exposure depends heavily on transaction size and how a trade is routed.
- Traders executing large swaps. A trade large enough to move a pool’s price becomes a visible target for sandwich attacks, and the trader typically absorbs worse pricing as a result.
- Users on congested networks. During periods of high activity, competition to have transactions favorably placed can drive up the fees ordinary users pay just to get processed at all.
- Anyone assuming their transaction is processed in the order submitted. Blockchains generally don’t guarantee first-in, first-out processing, and that assumption can lead to worse-than-expected trade outcomes.
What’s being done about it
Some networks and tools have introduced mechanisms meant to reduce MEV’s impact on regular users, such as private transaction submission that hides pending trades from searchers until they’re included in a block, or fair-ordering protocols that limit how much reordering is possible. None of these approaches eliminate MEV entirely, and whether ordinary users can meaningfully protect themselves from MEV depends heavily on which tools a given network and wallet actually support.
The bottom line
MEV isn’t a bug exploited by a shadowy few; it’s a structural feature of how public, transparent blockchains order transactions, and it’s captured through a defined chain of searchers, builders, and validators, each performing a distinguishable technical role. Understanding that these roles exist helps explain why trade execution on a public blockchain can differ from what a user might expect, and why price impact on larger trades is often worse than the quoted price alone would suggest.