The MEV Letter is a weekly collection of papers, articles and resources related to MEV. The intention of this letter is to provide a comprehensive summary of the latest research, discussions, and developments in the space, with links for further reading.
Papers & Articles
- Why Location Choice Matters by @boz1, @m1kuwill, @luiscorreia, @syang, @BrunoMr, and Stefanos Leonardos highlights findings from The Price of Decentralization in Block Building, which studies location choice in decentralized block building and shows that uncoordinated builders can over-concentrate near high-value sources, creating duplicate coverage and reducing welfare.
- Collective problem decomposition improves the wisdom of deliberative crowds by Federico Barrera-Lemarchand, Victoria Lescano-Charreau, Julieta Ruiz, Nuria Cáceres, @facuzeta, Mariano Sigman, and Joaquin Navajas examines reasoning strategies and finds that group-based problem decomposition improves the wisdom of crowds.
- Towards Decentralized Searcher Competition in MEV Markets by Roozbeh Sarenche and Yunwen Liu studies how first-price auctions can concentrate rewards among dominant searchers, and proposes a Shapley-capped auction to distribute rewards more broadly.
- Modeling Decisions in Blockchain Analytics: A Leakage-Aware Evaluation of Tree-Based vs. Sequential Models by Michał Bartnicki and Jarosław A. Chudziak analyzes how to distinguish organic Ethereum users from Sybils or MEV-bots, and finds that leakage-aware tree-based models outperform sequential models.
- Pre-FRP: Accountability and Liveness in Batched-Threshold Encrypted Mempools by Aditya Kumar describes proposed research on whether batched threshold encryption can reduce harmful MEV without introducing new information, censorship, or liveness advantages.
- How a MEV bot hunts without a mempool by hernsten analyzes blind arbitrage on Arbitrum from onchain transaction behavior with short bursts, obfuscated selectors, and offchain timing signals.
- Hidden in plain calldata by hernsten reverse-engineers an Arbitrum arbitrage bot’s custom calldata format to show how it encodes routes, pool types, fees, and more.
- Demand Model with Elasticities for Ethereum State, Data, and Execution and Glamsterdam Fee Market Analysis by Fei Wu estimates how demand for Ethereum execution, data, and state responds to fees, and models how Glamsterdam’s new gas accounting could shift the fee-market bottleneck toward state creation.
- The State of Ethereum Block Building since 2024, Part I: The Demand Side – Orderflow and the Priority Fee Landscape by Christoph Rosenmayr and Jascha Samadi examines how Ethereum’s priority fee market has changed since 2024, finding a shift from retail-facing Telegram-bots to searchers.
- The State of Ethereum Block Building since 2024, Part II: The Supply Side – Builder Economics and Orderflow Relationships by Christoph Rosenmayr and Jascha Samadi analyzes the Ethereum block builders market and how access to valuable orderflow, execution services, and subsidies shape builder surplus and market share.
Posts & Threads
- @syang published a thread summarizing findings from Boost+: Equitable, Incentive-Compatible Block Building, which presents a two-staged block-building architecture that decouples the process of collecting and ordering transactions, with builder algorithms running in TEEs.
- IC3 published a post showcasing some of the presentations from Shape Rotator Demo Night 1 on topics including private agent infrastructure, self-improving workflows, and sovereign data.
- IC3 published a post highlighting presentations and demos from the Shape Rotator Demo Night 2 on privacy, TEEs, agent orchestration, and more.
- IC3 published a post presenting coordinationOS by Shashank, @Tina, @dmarz, and @socrates1024 as an agent coordination system that helps distributed teams and agents coordinate across information and permission boundaries.
- Vitalik Buterin published a post comparing Ethereum’s 2023 roadmap against the current L1 Strawmap, highlighting how priorities have shifted toward privacy, quantum safety, scaling, and formal verification.
- EthCoordinate published a post announcing themselves as an evolution of EthStaker with a focus on governance coordination, facilitating stakeholder engagement and providing software, tooling, and support for home stakers.
- Trenton Van Epps published a post summarizing the EIPs scheduled for Glamsterdam, including ePBS, BALs, gas repricings, and more.
- Titan Builder published a thread detailing the adoption of propAMMs on Ethereum with $1B in total volume across six venues.
- Sourcify.eth published a thread sharing results from a preliminary scan of Ethereum contracts for Quick Slots compatibility, finding that 20.6K of 7.7M contracts may require attention.
Talks & Discussions
- Livestream recording of The MEV Workshop at the Science of Blockchain Conference 2026 (MEV-SBC ’26) hosted by Flashbots has been uploaded with talks highlighting the past year of MEV research and problems worth exploring next in cryptography, mechanism design, data, P2P, consensus, incentives, and their intersections.
- Livestream recording from BASS Stanford | SBC 2026 hosted by Stanford Blockchain Club and Blockchain Builders Fund has been uploaded with talks and panels on DeFi, agentic trading, sovereign AI, and more.
- Credible Commitments: Navigating the Dark Forest on Ethereum invites Michael for a conversation on Quasar Builder, orderflow dynamics, propAMMs, ACE, and the evolution toward ePBS.
- All Core Devs - Execution (ACDE) #242, July 30, 2026 hosted by Ansgar Dietrichs announced Platåberget as the first public testnet for Glamsterdam, and discussed Hegotá non-headliner proposals.
- Agenda by nixo.eth
- Notes by Yash Kamal Chaturvedi
- Post by Marc Garreau
- All Core Devs - Testing (ACDT) #90, August 3, 2026 hosted by Justin Traglia covered Glamsterdam devnet updates and gas repricings.
- All Core Devs - Consensus (ACDC) #184, August 6 2026 hosted by parithosh discussed updates from Glamsterdam devnets, faster slots in Hegotá, and more.
- Agenda by nixo.eth
- Notes by Yash Kamal Chaturvedi
- Post by Barnabé Monnot
- Post by Barnabé Monnot
- All Core Devs - Testing (ACDT) #91, August 10, 2026 hosted by Mario Vega covered updates from Glamsterdam testnets and gas limit increases.
- Agenda by Mario Vega
- Encrypt The Mempool #7, July 22, 2026 hosted by Justin Florentine discussed the latest updates related to LUCID encrypted mempool, including how to eliminate key-reveal optionality, and Silent, One-Shot threshold encryption.
- FOCIL Breakout #39, August 4, 2026 hosted by Jihoon Song covered FOCIL testing and implementation updates.
- Agenda by Jihoon Song
- Thread by Jihoon Song
- Fast Confirmation Rule (FCR) #12, August 4, 2026 hosted by Mikhail Kalinin covered specification updates, client implementations, and testing of Fast Confirmation Rule.
Other
- TDX Security Update 2026.08.11 by @mateusz addresses 4 recent Intel TDX disclosures, noting that 2 are not relevant to BuilderNet, and the other 2 were already mitigated before disclosure.
- ePBS.Space by PBS Foundation tracks the in-protocol bid lifecycle under ePBS on Gloas devnets, including builder market share, bid history, missed reveals, and more.
- EIP-8363: Tapered Issuance Burn by pintail, Jerome de Tychey, dapplion, pa7x1, ladislaus.eth and Justin Drake proposes a modification to the ETH issuance curve by way of a partial burn of validator rewards.
- Thread by Jerome de Tychey
- Reply by Ansgar Dietrichs
- Reply by Stani Kulechov
- Reply by Mike Silagadze
- Reply by Julian Zawistowski
- Reply by Izzy
- Ethereum Foundation Board Update by Ethereum Foundation Board announces that pcaversaccio has joined the Ethereum Foundation Board for an initial one-year voluntary term, alongside Aya Miyaguchi, Vitalik Buterin, and Patrick Storchenegger.
- all-Protocol Update — July 2026 by Will Corcoran summarizes recent progress and upcoming work from the EF Protocol teams, across Glamsterdam, Hegotá, security, and ongoing protocol research.
- Blockspace: Connecting the World to Ethereum by Blockspace announces its launch as a for-profit Ethereum infrastructure company to commercially develop out-of-protocol Ethereum solutions alongside the open-source Blockspace Forum.
- Post by Drew Van der Werff
- Post by Michael Moser
- Post by Kubi Mensah
- Gasworks by StackDigest is a tool for estimating how past Ethereum transactions would be repriced under Glamsterdam’s new gas rules.
- Ethlabs is online. Week 6. by Barnabé Monnot outlines Ethlabs’ work toward 10-second slots for Hegotá, updates to the Fast Confirmation Rule, and more.
- Week 7. Proposal deadline for Hegota upgrade. by Julian Ma highlights Ethlabs’ push towards faster slots in Hegotá, and their views on the recent ETH issuance proposal.
- EIPs & Network Upgrades | July 2026 by Pooja Ranjan summarizes recent work to support Ethereum’s protocol process across Glamsterdam testing, Hegotá non-headliner planning, standards, and community tooling.
Sign up here if you’d like to get The MEV Letter straight to your inbox!
