Thanks to Phil Daian, Alex Obadia, and Mahimna Kelkar for plenty of discussions on the topic.
Since its introduction in the Flashboys 2.0 paper of 2019 by Daian et al., a lot has been said about Miner (now Maximal) Extractable Value, or MEV. In particular, the launch of the Flashbots Auction propelled what is today a billion dollar economy across various blockchains and centralized exchanges. From thrilling Twitter threads to academic research papers, the MEV phenomenon has captured a central spot in the cryptocurrency discourse. Oddly, however, there is no agreed upon formal definition of MEV.