The Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) of the European Union, one of the three regulatory bodies overseeing the region’s financial landscape, has released its findings on crypto regulatory measures under the Markets in Crypto Asset (MiCA) framework. In its proposed guidelines, the ESMA suggests treating miner-extractable value (MEV) as a form of market abuse under existing MiCA rules. MEV is an arbitrage strategy that involves re-ordering transactions within a block to maximize profits for validators and third-party builders.
According to Section 19 of the ESMA’s paper, MiCA acknowledges that orders, transactions, and other aspects of distributed ledger technology may indicate the presence of market abuse, such as the well-known MEV. This is where a miner or validator takes advantage of their ability to rearrange transactions to front-run a specific transaction and make a profit.
Patrick Hansen, senior director of EU strategy and policy at Circle, criticized the ESMA’s policy suggestions, noting that complying with the proposed regulations would be burdensome and unrealistic for most regulated crypto businesses in the EU. He mentioned that these businesses would have to detect and report instances of MEV through complex “suspicious transaction or order reports” (STORs), with the ESMA STOR template alone being six pages long. Hansen urged all parties involved in MEV practices to provide feedback on the ESMA’s proposed regulatory overhaul before the June 25 deadline.
MEV remains a concern in decentralized finance, and network developers and industry leaders are proposing various solutions to address the issue. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin recently discussed a multi-faceted approach to combat Ethereum’s MEV problem, which includes using strategies like MEV quarantine, MEV minimization, inclusion lists, and reducing node hardware requirements. Buterin emphasized the need to mitigate MEV rather than banning the practice altogether, allowing protocols like Cowswap to function while protecting users from the hidden costs of MEV.