The Origins of MEV: Systematic Attribution of Arbitrage Opportunity Creation at Scale

TL;DR

This paper develops a systematic framework to attribute MEV opportunities to their on-chain origins, analyzing over one million blocks on Polygon to reveal the sources and concentration of arbitrage creation.

Contribution

It formalizes the MEV attribution problem and evaluates four novel methods for identifying transaction sources of arbitrage opportunities at scale.

Findings

Most atomic arbitrage opportunities originate from single source transactions.

A small subset of protocols generates the majority of MEV opportunities.

Different attribution methods vary in accuracy, cost, and scalability.

Abstract

Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) represents billions of dollars in extracted value that fundamentally shapes blockchain network dynamics and participant incentives. While research has focused on MEV extraction and mitigation, we lack systematic methods to attribute MEV opportunities to their on-chain origins. This paper formalizes the MEV opportunity attribution problem and introduces a systems framework for identifying which transactions create arbitrage opportunities and quantifying their contributions. We design and evaluate four attribution methods for atomic arbitrage on EVM-compatible networks: bot-data-driven, simulation-based, coefficient-based, and Shapley-based approaches. Through large-scale retrospective analysis spanning over one million blocks on Polygon, we demonstrate that the majority of atomic arbitrage opportunities can be traced to single source transactions, validating our central hypothesis about competitive MEV markets. We quantify a highly concentrated distribution of MEV creation, where a small subset of protocols generates most opportunities, and provide comparative analysis of method trade-offs in accuracy, cost, and scalability. Our findings offer insights for protocol designers reducing MEV leakage, validators optimizing transaction ordering, and analysts measuring ecosystem health through opportunity creation.