Does Bitcoin also have "MEV"? But it's completely different from the Ethereum trap.

When it comes to MEV, most people think of those bots on Ethereum—front running, sandwich attacks, liquidation sniping. But you may not know that Bitcoin also has a similar “soft MEV” mechanism, it's just not as aggressive.

MEV of Ethereum vs Bitcoin looks like this

Ethereum's MEV: Bots directly manipulate the order of DEX trades and liquidations, users get sniped and pay high gas fees. It's very violent.

Bitcoin's MEV: Miners and mining pools determine whose transactions are confirmed first based on fee signals, Mempool policies, and block templates. More hidden.

In simple terms, the MEV of Bitcoin mainly occurs through fee bidding and packaging strategies, rather than code-level attacks.

How Miners “Secretly” Determine Your Queue Position

After Bitcoin Core v28, full RBF (Replace-By-Fee) and 1-to-1 package forwarding are enabled by default:

• RBF: You can replace an unconfirmed transaction with a higher fee, even if it has been previously broadcast.
• CPFP (Child Pays For Parent): A child transaction with a high fee is used to incentivize the stuck parent transaction.
• Packing Strategy: Miners view parent and child transactions as a whole, sorting them by combined fee rate.

For example:

Scenario 1: Alice sends a payment with a standard fee, while Bob uses RBF to increase the fee for front running. Even if Alice broadcasts first, Bob's replacement transaction is likely to take precedence in the next block.

Scenario 2: An old father transaction is stuck, and you send a sub-transaction with a high fee. The miner sees that the combined fee rate is very high, so they include the entire package into the block — prioritizing it over a standalone high fee transaction.

The More Invisible Layer: Off-Chain Accelerators and Policy Filtering

Currently, the average transaction fee is about $0.68 (October data), but some players use a more direct way to bypass the public Mempool:

Off-chain accelerator (like ViaBTC): Directly send transactions to the mining pool, which allows for lower on-chain fees because part of the cost is paid off-chain. This way, your transaction is prioritized for inclusion, but onlookers cannot tell why.

Custom Policies of Mining Pools: The OCEAN mining pool has filtered inscription-type data, and Marathon has also attempted OFAC compliance screening. These policies are not constrained by consensus rules, and mining pools can choose at their discretion.

Node Standard Policy: The data size limit of OP_RETURN, TRUC transaction standards, etc., all affect the relay speed of transactions and final confirmation.

The result is: Tools like Miningpool.observer can compare published blocks and mining pool templates to identify some transactions whose inclusion order significantly deviates from pure transaction fee maximization—indicating that there are off-chain transactions or policy interventions behind it.

What Does It Mean for Your Wallet

In practice, these “soft MEV” advantages are quite subtle, but they do exist:

1. RBF replacement is very common - high transaction fee replacement can instantly kill the previous low fee version.
2. CPFP Rescue is the correct method for rescuing stuck transactions— as long as the combined fee rate is high enough.
3. Accelerator as an emergency channel — Useful when the public Mempool is full.
4. Adjusting transaction fees can change positions — a difference of a few sat/vB can change the ranking.

Compared to Ethereum's DeFi MEV, Bitcoin's system appears much calmer on the surface. There are no front running DEXs, no liquidation sniper Bots, just miners and mining pools slowly adjusting the order based on economic incentives— and this adjustment is mostly imperceptible to users.

What will the future be like

At the current cost level (in the range of $1-2, accounting for 0.96% of the block reward), soft MEV is primarily manifested as moderate RBF enhancements and CPFP self-rescue, with off-chain channels serving as an emergency measure.

But if the trend of inscriptions/OP_RETURN rises again, and transaction fees skyrocket to high levels, or block subsidies drop very low, miners will be more proactive in using policy filtering and off-chain transactions to maximize profits. At that time, Bitcoin's “soft MEV” will become more prominent.

Core mechanism remains unchanged: Miners create blocks based on transaction fees, transaction package structure, and policy preferences, with RBF and CPFP as the primary tools, while off-chain channels are a backup option.

In simple terms, Bitcoin won't front run your trades like Ethereum does, but miners are indeed silently determining your queue position in the Mempool. Understanding this logic is essential for truly optimizing your trading strategy.