On July 8th, we launched Gas Fee Refunds as an open, permissionless alternative to proprietary orderflow deals. Gas refunds are live today for all transactions sent through Flashbots Protect and builder. The refund rule is open source and executed securely in TEEs.
Many Ethereum transactions could land just as quickly for much less than what users typically pay. However, determining the optimal gas fee is a constant challenge for users. This uncertainty leads to overpayment, costing users and applications millions of dollars annually in unnecessary fees.
Gas fee refunds aims to address the persistent issue of users overpaying for transactions.
With gas fee refunds, users set a maximum price they’re willing to pay and the Flashbots Builder will bid to lower the cost on their behalf. This process doesn’t change how the transactions are executed and doesn’t require any additional steps from the user – it just works.
Gas fee refunds run on top of the Flashbots TEE builder and are designed to be permissionless, secure, and available to everyone. Later this year, we’ll take further steps to make refunds tamper-proof and censorship-resistant in a decentralized setting.
To get started add Protect on fast mode. This will provide you with both MEV protection and gas fee refunds at speeds comparable to the public mempool.