Protection: What You Can Close, and What It Costs

Protection on a public chain is a matter of degree. Nothing here removes exposure entirely, and any product that says otherwise is describing a marketing position rather than a mechanism. What the three pieces in this section do is state precisely which exposure each measure closes, which one it leaves untouched, and what the closing costs in cash, latency and dependence.

The order is deliberate. Private submission comes first because endpoint choice affects every order you send and is usually the one setting nobody has consciously made. Sandwich defence follows, treated as a stack of partial measures that interact badly when they are switched on all at once. The section ends with router assessment, because in the end the largest determinant of your execution is which business you handed the order to.

A note on tone: nothing in this section assumes bad faith by any named party. The arrangements described are ordinary market structure, and the reason to understand them is not outrage but pricing. You cannot decide whether an arrangement is worth its cost until you can say what the arrangement is.