Dusk Network’s Approach to Preventing Front Running and MEV Attacks

Front running and MEV (Maximal Extractable Value) have become some of the most frustrating — and costly — issues in today’s blockchain ecosystems. For everyday users, it often feels like you’re playing a game where unseen actors always get to move first. Trades get sandwiched, transactions get reordered, and value quietly leaks away before blocks are even finalized.

Dusk Network takes a very different stance on this problem. Instead of treating MEV as an unavoidable side effect of public blockchains, Dusk is built around the idea that fairness and privacy can be core protocol features, not afterthoughts.

At the heart of Dusk’s approach is transaction privacy. On most blockchains, pending transactions sit in a public mempool. Anyone can see them, analyze them, and act on that information. This transparency is what enables front running in the first place. Dusk removes that advantage by making transaction details confidential until they are finalized on-chain. If you can’t see what’s coming, you can’t exploit it.

This is where Dusk’s zero-knowledge technology plays a key role. Transactions are validated without exposing sensitive data like amounts or execution details ahead of time. Validators can confirm that a transaction is valid, but they don’t gain insight that could be used to manipulate ordering or extract MEV. The result is a system where information asymmetry — the fuel for MEV — is drastically reduced.

Another important piece is deterministic transaction execution. On Dusk, transactions are processed in a way that minimizes discretionary ordering by validators. When block producers have less freedom to reorder transactions for profit, the economic incentive to engage in MEV strategies weakens. This aligns validator behavior with network health rather than short-term extraction.#dusk $DUSK @Dusk