SoK: Transparent Dishonesty: front-running attacks on Blockchain

Understand

We consider front-running to be a course of action where an entity benefits from prior access to privileged market information about upcoming transactions and trades.

• Front-running has been an issue in financial instrument markets since the 1970s.
• With the advent of the blockchain technology, front-running has resurfaced in new forms we explore here, instigated by blockchains decentralized and transparent nature.
• In this paper, we draw from a scattered body of knowledge and instances of front-running across the top 25 most active decentral applications (DApps) deployed on Ethereum blockchain.