[SilasX]

> It's not appropriate, because it's a poor generalization to begin with. People just see "frontrunning" and have a vague sense it's fundamentally illegitimate because of vague connections to the illegal practice

No, not because of vague connections, but because it does the same kind of destructive thing that’s bad (for the ecosystem) for the same reason it’s bad on the normal market: it extracts value from a transaction because of timing and a privileged position, disencentivizing positive-sum behavior. (In the broker’s case, because of knowing about the transaction; in the miner’s, because of having that mining power and being able to quickly execute on knowledge of upcoming transactions.)