Sandwich attack
A two-leg MEV exploit — front-run a victim's swap with a buy, let it execute at worse price, back-run with a sell.
Common against DEX swaps with insufficient slippage protection. Mitigations: tighter slippage tolerance, private orderflow (Flashbots Protect), batch auctions (CoW Swap), aggregators with MEV protection.
Related terms
- MEV (maximal extractable value)Value an entity ordering transactions in a block can extract from rearranging, inserting, or censoring them.
- SlippageDifference between expected and realised execution price — caused by pool depth + competing fills.
- AMM (automated market maker)A smart contract that prices assets via a pricing curve over a pool of reserves rather than an order book.