Orca Crypto
Security term

Front running

Acting on knowledge of a pending transaction before it executes.

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Updated 2026-08-303 min readDefinition
Definition

Acting on knowledge of a pending transaction before it executes.

Because pending transactions are public, bots can see a large order coming and position ahead of it. This is illegal in traditional markets and structurally unavoidable in a public mempool.

Mitigations exist: private relays, batch auctions, encrypted mempools and order flow auctions all reduce the exposure.

In practice

CoW Swap batches orders and settles them together specifically to remove this attack surface.

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