The MEV Sparseness Paradox: Why High-Value Blocks Are Half-Empty
· 7 min read
There's a counterintuitive pattern buried in Ethereum's block-building data: the most valuable blocks — the ones where MEV extractors collect the most ETH — consistently contain fewer transactions than ordinary blocks.
Not slightly fewer. Significantly fewer.
A block worth 0.2–1 ETH in MEV carries, on average, 185 transactions. A normal low-MEV block carries 293. That's 108 fewer transactions — a 37% drop from peak — in a block that everyone in the market fought hardest to produce.