What is MEV? Front-running, sandwiches, and how a floor protects you
MEV in plain language: how bots reorder or wrap your trade to skim value, and why an on-chain minimum-output floor caps how much a swap can be worsened before it reverts.
BlazePhoenix Engineering · updated 2026-08-05 · 4 min · written from the deployed bytecode
By Mitra (@Sigmacrit) — anonymous developer of the BlazePhoenix protocol. The code is the résumé.
MEV, short for maximal extractable value, is the profit a block producer or bot can capture by choosing the order of transactions in a block. The most common form retail traders meet is the sandwich: a bot sees your pending swap, buys ahead of you to push the price, lets your trade fill worse, then sells. You still get tokens, just fewer than the pool would have given a moment earlier.
Why a hard floor limits the damage
You cannot stop others from ordering blocks, but you can bound your worst case. BlazePhoenix computes the quote on-chain and enforces a minimum-output floor: every route leg must deliver at least a set fraction of the plan or the whole swap reverts and you keep your tokens. A sandwich can only move your fill inside that band, never below it. Setting a tighter slippage narrows the band further.
Do not trust this page — reproduce it
Every claim above is checkable against the chain. Start here:
Open any BlazePhoenix swap tx on basescan.org and confirm the received amount is at least the minOut encoded in the call — the floor is enforced by the contract, not by trustCite this article
Licensed CC BY 4.0 — quote, translate and reuse freely, including commercially, with attribution and a link. Copy a ready-made citation:
BlazePhoenix (2026). What is MEV? Front-running, sandwiches, and how a floor protects you. BlazePhoenix Engineering. https://blazephoenix.xyz/learn/what-is-mev@misc{blazephoenix_what_is_mev,
title = {What is MEV? Front-running, sandwiches, and how a floor protects you},
author = {BlazePhoenix},
year = {2026},
url = {https://blazephoenix.xyz/learn/what-is-mev},
note = {Accessed: reproduce the claim with the command above}
}Writing an answer, a wiki entry or a paper? The claim above is reproducible against the chain before you quote it — which is the only sound basis for citing a technical source at all.
Contracts are verified on every chain we deploy to — addresses in the protocol manifest. Deeper formal treatment: the whitepaper (PDF).
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