Coin Center Files Brief in MEV Bot Case after Prosecutors’ Opposition

Cryptocurrency advocacy organization Coin Center has weighed in on the ongoing criminal trial of two brothers who allegedly exploited the Ethereum blockchain using maximum extractable value (MEV) bots.

In an amicus curiae brief on Monday – a document filed by an entity that is not a party to the case – Coin Center argued against one of the prosecutors’ key theories involving Anton and James Peraire-Bueno. The two individuals are allegedly responsible for an MEV exploit of $25 million in April 2023.

According to Coin Center, the US government’s claims of “honest validation” lack merit and should be rejected by the court.

“‘Honest validation’ in cryptocurrency communities is a mathematical control rather than a legal or normative judgment, and the defendants appear to have contravened any of the clear rules or controls found in the Ethereum protocol in a way that merits outside interference or enforcement,” Coin Center said, adding:

“[T]The prosecution asks the Court to impose a novel and foreign code of conduct in addition to these rules of protocol, not only without justification, but in a way that would be prejudicial to the government to do by way of criminal prosecution.

The amicus brief, filed on the 14th day of the Peraire-Buenos criminal trial, came amid the opposition of the US prosecutorswhich claims that the Coin Center encouraged a jury to acquit the two brothers using political rather than legal arguments.

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Different theories of the $25 million case

At the center of the case is the MEV bot exploit, which occurs when a validator manipulates the order of transactions in a block to maximize earnings. The outcome of the case is likely to have significant implications between traders and cryptocurrency platforms.

According to the report from the courtroom by Inner City Press, lawyers for the United States government he said on Wednesday that they plan to argue that “the defendants engaged in false claims, presenting themselves as honest validators.[s]”, which allows them to commit exploitation.

“Within the Ethereum ecosystem, ‘honest’ validation simply means obeying the specified consensus rules articulated in the protocol software,” the Coin Center brief said. “[A]Adoption of the “honest validator” theory of the fraud charge would be foreign to widespread industry practice and would contravene the long-standing legal principles of damnum absque injuria—damage without legal prejudice—and fair notice.”

Defense lawyers said the theory was a “nonsensical allegation,” saying in their opening arguments that the “victims here were sandwich bots.”