Does MEV exist on Solana or only Ethereum?

Both, in different shapes. Solana has no public mempool in the Ethereum sense, but validators and block builders still order transactions, and services exist specifically to compete for that ordering.

Am I actually being sandwiched?

Check a swap where you filled much worse than quoted. If a buy of the same token landed immediately before yours and a sell immediately after, from the same address, that is a sandwich.

Can I avoid it entirely?

Not entirely. You can make yourself an unattractive target by keeping slippage tight, splitting large orders, and using routes that submit through protected channels.

What is MEV? A plain definition for Solana traders

MEV is value someone extracts by controlling the order transactions execute in.

Not by breaking anything. By seeing what's about to happen and arranging to be first, last, or both.

Why ordering is worth money

Blockchains process transactions in an order somebody decides. Whoever decides can put their own transaction wherever it's most profitable.

Say a large buy is about to execute on a thin pool. Anybody who sees it coming can buy immediately before, ride the price up that the large buy causes, and sell immediately after. The victim gets a worse fill, the extractor keeps the difference, and no rule was broken.

That's the whole idea. Everything else is variations on it.

The forms that reach ordinary traders

Three matter for somebody trading Solana coins.

Sandwiching. The example above. Your buy gets front-run and back-run, you fill worse, somebody profits. This is the one that costs retail traders real money on new coins.

Arbitrage. Same token priced differently across venues, so bots equalise it and pocket the gap. Mostly harmless to you and arguably useful, since it keeps prices consistent.

Liquidations. Bots race to liquidate undercollateralised positions for the fee. Only relevant if you're borrowing.

Sandwiching is where your attention belongs.

How Solana differs

Ethereum has a public mempool where pending transactions sit visible before inclusion. Solana works differently, forwarding transactions directly to upcoming leaders, so there's no single public waiting room to watch.

Does that mean Solana is MEV-free? No. Validators and specialised block-building services still see transactions before they're final, and infrastructure exists specifically to bid for favourable placement. Different plumbing, same economics.

What makes you a target

Two things, and you control both.

Your slippage tolerance. This is the big one. Tolerance tells everybody the maximum you'll accept losing to price movement, which is exactly the number an extractor needs to size their attack. Set 40% and you've published how much is available to take. What is slippage covers why "set it high so it goes through" is the most expensive habit in retail trading.

Your order size relative to liquidity. A 20 SOL buy on a coin with 30 SOL through the curve moves price enormously, which makes the sandwich profitable. The same order on a deep pool moves almost nothing and isn't worth attacking.

Reducing your exposure

Five things, roughly in order of effect:

Keep slippage as low as will actually fill, and reduce order size before raising it
Split large orders into several smaller ones spread over minutes
Use routes that submit through protected channels where available
Avoid trading a coin during its most chaotic first minutes if size matters to you
Check your fills afterwards, since you can't fix what you never noticed

None of that eliminates MEV. All of it makes you a less attractive target than the person next to you, which is usually enough.

Why this matters to a coin creator

Two reasons, and the second one is the expensive one.

Your buyers get sandwiched on your coin, particularly in the first hour when liquidity is thinnest and slippage settings are loosest. That's friction you never see, because a bad fill leaves no trace on your page. It just makes people less likely to come back.

And anything automated running on your coin faces the same exposure at scale. A campaign making thousands of swaps without bundling its legs donates a slice of every single one to searchers. That's not a rounding error at volume, and it's one of the four cost components a real quote has to cover.

Which is why "we do the same thing cheaper" usually means MEV protection got dropped. What a campaign actually costs goes through which row typically disappears, and sandwich attacks explained covers the mechanics in detail.

How much anyone can take

MEV is profit from controlling transaction order. On Solana it mostly reaches you as sandwiching, your slippage setting decides how much is available to take, and the fix is tighter tolerance plus smaller orders rather than any clever tool.