Popular crypto wallet MetaMask launches 'smart transactions' to combat Ethereum advance
It is the first step in a more ambitious roadmap to transform the inner workings of Ethereum's largest wallet.
MetaMask, the most popular crypto wallet for Ethereum, is launching a new feature this week designed to help users avoid the consequences of maximum extractable value, or MEV.
The new optional feature, called Smart Transactions, will allow users to send transactions to a "virtual mempool" before they are officially consolidated on-chain. According to Consensys, the company behind MetaMask, the virtual mempool will protect against certain types of MEV strategies and run transaction simulations behind the scenes to help users get lower fees.
MEV is an additional profit that blockchain traders can extract from users by previewing or reordering transactions before they are written to the network, which is sometimes compared to the unpleasant practice of forwarding orders in markets. traditional financial institutions. MEV has a major impact on the functioning of Ethereum: it increases prices for users, slows down transaction speeds, and even causes transactions to fail under certain network conditions.
"Every year $400 million is wasted on rollbacks, deadlocks, and obviously predatory MEV sandwich and front-end attacks," Jason Linehan, director of Consensys' Special Mechanisms Group division, said in an interview.
"Everyone agrees it's a huge problem," Linehan said. "From a user experience perspective, the idea that you pay for a transaction that does nothing is absurd."
