The Path to Solving MEV: ZK-Driven Darkpool

1 MEV: The Fatal Flaw Strangling Web3's Inclusive Vision

In the Web3 space, MEV (Miner Extractable Value) is hardly a new topic, but recent statements from several industry heavyweights have once again underscored its criticality.

On February 24th, Binance founder CZ explicitly stated in response to on-chain transaction failures that developers should prioritize and resolve the MEV issue, emphasizing that "eliminating MEV benefits most users".

On February 19th, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin highlighted during an AMA session on the Tako platform that Layer 2 solutions not only enhance scalability but also offer faster transaction confirmations through "preconfirmations" and mitigate MEV through their "sequencer" designs.

1.1 What is MEV?

MEV refers to the extra profits obtained by miners (or validators) in a blockchain network through adjusting transaction order, inserting or censoring transactions, etc. MEV mainly includes three types:

• Frontrunning: Attackers monitor the blockchain network's mempool, preemptively execute transactions in the same direction (such as buying specific tokens), drive up prices, and let the original transaction be executed at a worse price to profit.

• Backrunning: Immediately executing related operations (such as arbitrage or liquidation) after the target transaction is completed, and making profits from market changes caused by the transaction.

• Sandwich Attack: Combining Frontrunning and Backrunning, inserting a transaction before and after the target transaction to "sandwich" it and extract maximum profits. This attack is common in large DEX transactions.

1.2 MEV Attacks are Ubiquitous

On the EigenPhi platform, real-time monitoring of relevant data can be conducted through MEV Live-Stream. Timestamps from transactions clearly show that MEV attacks are occurring constantly on the Ethereum network.

Through the platform data, we can take an in - depth look at the recent sandwich attacks. The data in the following figure shows that there have been 20,868 sandwich attack incidents in the past 7 days, causing 10,581 users to suffer losses. These figures visually demonstrate the substantial impact of MEV on ordinary users.

1.3 How MEV Attacks Undermine the Decentralized Future

Public blockchains promise an open financial system accessible to all, but MEV is threatening this vision. Its harm manifests in three key dimensions:

1.Direct Exploitation of Ordinary Users

• Slippage and Price Manipulation: MEV attacks degrade users’ transaction execution prices, causing financial losses.

• Gas Fee Wars: Attackers inflate Gas fees to seize the transaction order, forcing ordinary users to pay higher costs—a "stealth tax."

• Resource Waste: Inefficient MEV competition worsens network congestion, further driving up on-chain operation costs.

2.Disruption of Market Fairness and Stability

• Distorted Competitive Environment: MEV bots systematically exploit ordinary traders through information and technical advantages, undermining market fairness.

• Exacerbated Price Volatility: High-frequency MEV operations artificially amplify market swings, threatening DeFi protocol stability (e.g., cascading liquidations).

• Trust Crisis: Prolonged MEV exploitation may drive away ordinary users, leading to liquidity depletion.

3.Fundamental Shocks to Blockchain Infrastructure

• Centralization Risks: MEV’s superlinear returns spawn "super miners" that monopolize block construction, violating decentralization principles.

• Protocol Fragility: Systems are forced to add complexity (e.g., privacy transactions) to address MEV, sacrificing accessibility.

• Dystopian Outcome: If left unchecked, a network controlled by a few MEV oligarchs will emerge, burying Web3’s open ideals.

MEV is not just a technical flaw but a fundamental challenge to blockchain’s decentralized ethos. To avoid a "MEV dystopia," developers, miners, and the community must collaborate. Now, let’s start with the first gateway for users entering the Web3 world—wallets—to see how ordinary users can protect against wealth losses from MEV attacks.

2 How Can Ordinary Users Respond to MEV Attacks Threatening Their Wealth?

As DeFi users, we often encounter front-running or sandwich attacks, leading to increased transaction slippage or even failed trades. However, enabling the Anti-MEV function in wallets can significantly reduce the risk of being targeted by MEV bots.

Below are mainstream MEV protection solutions currently available, which can be directly integrated into popular wallets like MetaMask and Rabby to make DeFi transactions safer.

2.1 BlockSec Anti-MEV RPC

As a full - stack service provider in the blockchain security field, BlockSec has launched Anti-MEV RPC, which is specially designed to protect DeFi users. This solution currently covers two major mainstream networks, Ethereum and BSC, and is very easy to use: users only need to add the specified RPC endpoint in their wallet to activate the protection (as shown in the figure below).

2.2 Flashbots Protect

Flashbots is a research and development organization dedicated to reducing the negative impact of MEV on blockchain ecosystems (stateful blockchains, starting with Ethereum). In October 2021, it launched Flashbots Protect RPC. Anyone can add this RPC endpoint to their wallet to effectively prevent transactions from being front-run. It has wide compatibility and supports mainstream wallets such as MetaMask, Rainbow, Family, OKX, imToken, and Uniswap.

2.3 MEV Blocker

MEV Blocker is an MEV-protection RPC solution co-developed and managed by CoW DAO, Beaver Builder, and Gnosis DAO. Currently focused on the Ethereum network, it can be integrated into wallets such as Uniswap Wallet, Rabby Wallet, Crypto.com DeFi Wallet, Ambire Wallet, and Keepkey Wallet.

2.4 Binance Ecosystem Strengthens MEV Protection System

On February 16th, BNB Chain officially announced a collaboration with mainstream wallet providers to launch a three-tier MEV protection solution:

• Smart Protection Wallets: MEV protection enabled by default

• Optional Protection Wallets: support manual activation/deactivation of protection functions

• Expert-Level Protection: providing customized protection strategies for advanced users

This protection network has achieved tangible progress. On March 13th, leading DEX platform PancakeSwap announced the full expansion of its MEV Guard function, currently supporting:

• One-Click Protection: MetaMask and OKX Wallet users can instantly activate the function via a dedicated page.

• Customized Protection: Rabby Wallet users can manually configure the function through RPC settings.

• Seamless Protection: For Binance Wallet and Trust Wallet users, MEV Guard is automatically enabled by default when connecting to PancakeSwap.

3 How Can DeFi Builders Crack the MEV Dilemma?

The core vulnerability of MEV attacks lies in public mempools exposing users' transaction intent, making privacy-oriented transaction processing mechanisms the key to solving this problem. But which direction holds long-term promise: processing transactions in non-public mempools, or directly implementing privacy-preserving transaction handling?

3.1 Private Transaction Pools

Public mempools act as transparent battlefields, enabling MEV bots to exploit opportunities. The core logic of this mechanism is to submit transactions to private transaction mempools, cutting off MEV bots' access to transaction information and protecting the fairness of transaction ordering.

For example, the OKX Web3 Wallet integrates Flashbot protection, routing transactions to the Flashbots private pool, where trusted nodes ensure unalterable transaction order. MEV Blocker also employs its own private transaction pool architecture, providing systematic protection for all transactions.

Protection Effect of MEV Blocker

The practical protection effect of private transaction pools has been verified. According to official data from Cow Protocol, its MEV Blocker system has successfully safeguarded over $243.6 billion in DEX trading volume from April 23, 2023, to May 22, 2025.

3.2 Darkpool

As private transaction pools have shown, introducing third parties is indeed a direct way to solve the problem, but this not only introduces trust assumptions but also runs counter to the core concept of blockchain decentralization. Therefore, we turn our attention to sustainable Darkpools.

In the blockchain field, Darkpools achieve privacy protection through cryptographic technologies such as zero-knowledge proof (ZK), trusted execution environments (TEE), and secure multi-party computation (MPC). Among them, ZK plays a key role—it can complete all necessary verifications without revealing transaction details at all, perfectly balancing the dual needs of blockchain transparency and trustworthiness with user privacy protection.

The core feature of Darkpool is to hide key transaction information (such as amount, participants, transaction path, etc.) while ensuring transaction compliance and verifiability, thus effectively defending against MEV attacks.

The following are several mature Darkpool projects:

• Renegade: An on-chain Darkpool built based on the MPC-ZK framework

Before trading, orders are matched through MPC to ensure that order information is completely confidential before matching. After the transaction, the transaction is settled based on ZK technology, and verifiers never see any order details, thus resisting MEV attacks and protecting privacy.

• Penumbra: End-to-end encrypted transactions achieved through ZK

All privacy calculations are completed locally on the user's device, and only the two transaction parties can decrypt the data. Users can also selectively disclose information to meet compliance requirements while ensuring privacy.

• Panther: A ZK cross-chain layer infrastructure supporting privacy DeFi regulatory areas

It protects transaction privacy through ZK while supporting compliance audits. Its Multi-Asset Shielded Pools (MASPs) generate privatized zAssets, and the Zswap module realizes cross-chain encrypted transactions, hiding user data while meeting regulatory requirements.

Technical Bottlenecks and Optimization Directions

Despite the huge potential of Darkpool in the field of private transactions, the high threshold of technical implementation has prevented this track from thriving. For Darkpool to achieve large-scale adoption in the DeFi ecosystem, a key technical challenge must be addressed first: building an infrastructure network capable of generating zero-knowledge proofs efficiently in real time. Failing to overcome this bottleneck, the slow proof generation speed will severely restrict practical application scenarios, ultimately making user experience unable to meet commercial-grade requirements.

This is precisely the focus of ZEROBASE. As a leading decentralized zero-knowledge proof network, we provide powerful infrastructure support for next-generation privacy applications. Currently, we have successfully provided zero-knowledge proof solutions for zkLynex and Unyfy. Through continuous technical optimization, our ZK proof network can now achieve a proof generation efficiency of up to 120 milliseconds per million Circom proof constraints (per RTX 4090).

Real-time monitoring by our proof network browser shows that ZK proof generation time can be stably controlled within tens to hundreds of milliseconds (specific performance varies with circuit complexity), fully meeting the rigorous requirements of high-concurrency commercial scenarios.

This performance breakthrough stems from the following innovations from ZEROBASE:

• Hardware Architecture Optimization: Adopting a multi-Hub-multi-Node distributed architecture, combined with virtual node dynamic scheduling technology, enables efficient allocation of computing resources dedicated to ZK proof generation among Nodes. This ensures the high-throughput and low-latency characteristics of zero-knowledge proof services.

• Software Stack Acceleration: Circuits are written based on Circom, and proof generation is accelerated via Gnark, enabling agile development and rapid iteration.

4 How to Balance Privacy, Compliance and Security?

While Darkpools provide market liquidity and protect transaction privacy, they also become potential hotbeds for illegal activities like market manipulation and front-running, struggling to meet regulatory compliance requirements.

Partial Decryptable Commitment Solutions: Balancing Privacy and Compliance

ZEROBASE offers Selectively Decryptable Commitments to ensure user transaction privacy while meeting compliance requirements. The highlights of this solution include:

• Privacy Protection: Transaction details are encrypted by default to prevent MEV attacks and on-chain tracking. Regulatory Friendliness: Authorized institutions can view complete transactions through ZK trapdoor to satisfy compliance review needs.

• Trustless Mechanism: Relying on cryptography rather than third-party intermediaries to ensure fairness.

ZK Circuit Security Assurance

The complexity of ZK circuits cannot be ignored – a subtle logical flaw can lead to severe data breaches and financial losses. As a team with long-term expertise in ZK security, ZEROBASE not only builds and maintains a professional ZK security framework and ZK bug tracker, but also provides comprehensive ZK circuit auditing services to the industry. Security has always been our core focus.