Security, Economics, and MEV in Decentralized Finance Systems

Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) has become a critical topic in blockchain and decentralized finance (DeFi), capturing the value that can be extracted through control over transaction ordering and execution. While DeFi enables programmable, composable, and automated financial systems, these same features introduce new economically driven attack vectors that threaten fairness and protocol integrity. MEV-related behaviors—including front-running, sandwich, and liquidation attacks—extend beyond single-chain settings to cross-chain bridges, rollups, shared sequencers, and complex automated market makers, where latency asymmetries and liquidity fragmentation amplify adversarial opportunities. Recent research has proposed a variety of mitigation approaches, such as auction-based execution mechanisms, cryptographic techniques, and architectural redesigns; however, these solutions often involve trade-offs among decentralization, efficiency, and usability, highlighting the need for systematic analysis across diverse DeFi environments.

This Research Topic aims to consolidate and advance current understanding of MEV–driven attacks and mitigation strategies in DeFi systems. Despite increasing attention to MEV, many attack vectors remain insufficiently characterized, particularly in complex and highly composable environments such as cross-chain protocols, rollups, and multi-layer DeFi ecosystems. The dynamic interplay between economic incentives, protocol design choices, and adversarial behavior continues to raise unresolved security and fairness challenges. The collection seeks to foster rigorous analysis of both established and emerging MEV-related threats, while critically examining the effectiveness and limitations of existing mitigation approaches. Contributions are expected to deepen theoretical foundations, provide empirical insights, and clarify the broader implications of MEV for decentralization, market efficiency, and protocol robustness. In particular, this Research Topic aims to:

1. analyze MEV-driven attacks across diverse DeFi primitives,
2. formalize adversarial models and threat assumptions,
3. evaluate mitigation mechanisms and their unintended consequences, and
4. identify open research problems at the intersection of security, economics, and decentralized systems.

Ultimately, the goal is to inform the design of more secure, fair, transparent, and resilient DeFi infrastructures.

This Research Topic welcomes contributions addressing MEV-related attacks and security challenges in DeFi systems, including but not limited to:

* Front-running, sandwich, and back-running attacks

* MEV in decentralized exchanges and automated market makers

* Cross-chain and multi-chain MEV attacks and arbitrage strategies

* Oracle manipulation and liquidation-based MEV exploits

* MEV in Layer-2 and rollup systems, including cross-rollup arbitrage and shared sequencers

* Economically motivated transaction exclusion, delay, and censorship behaviors

* MEV-related smart contract vulnerabilities in DeFi applications

* Economic and incentive design flaws enabling MEV extraction in DeFi applications

* MEV-enabled market manipulation and execution-layer economic exploits

* Timing games and free-option problems arising from transaction ordering and execution

* Empirical measurements and case studies of MEV in deployed systems

* Protocol-level, cryptographic, and economic techniques for mitigating MEV

* Limitations and unintended consequences of MEV mitigation mechanisms

We invite original research articles, survey papers, systematization-of-knowledge (SoK) contributions, and empirical studies. Interdisciplinary work bridging security, economics, and protocol design is particularly encouraged.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Community Case Study
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• FAIR² DATA Direct Submission
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Community Case Study
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• FAIR² DATA Direct Submission
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Policy and Practice Reviews
• Policy Brief
• Review
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: Maximal Extractable Value (MEV), DeFi Security, Decentralized Exchanges (DEXs), MEV Attacks and Exploits, Cross-chain and Multi-chain MEV, Crypto-economic Mechanisms

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.