Frontrun

A strategy where an actor profits by getting their transaction confirmed before another known pending transaction. They observe a large trade in the public mempool and pay a higher gas fee to execute their own order first, capitalizing on the price impact of the incoming trade.

Why it matters on AGON

AGON's core betting engine is off-chain, so your bets placed via /markets are shielded from direct frontrunning. This is a deliberate design choice for speed and fairness. However, AGON is a crypto-native app on Base. Any on-chain interaction—depositing USDC collateral, withdrawing winnings, or interacting with future on-chain governance—occurs in the public mempool. A bot could see a large deposit and attempt to manipulate a related asset price before your transaction confirms. While this is an edge case for our sports betting product, it's a fundamental risk of DeFi. Understanding it is critical for anyone managing their own collateral on-chain.

How to apply

For most users, the application is defensive. The simplest defense is to use a wallet with RPC privacy features or a trusted RPC provider that offers some protection. For more advanced traders moving significant size, private transaction relays are the standard. These services send your transaction directly to block producers, bypassing the public mempool where bots hunt for alpha. On a practical level, this means your large swap or liquidity provision isn't visible until it's already included in a block. For the average degen, simply being aware that your pending transactions are public information is the key takeaway.

See also

mev · sandwich-attack · backrun · jit-liquidity

Trading prediction markets involves risk. Not financial advice.