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.
See our Transparency Reports for deeper dives into updates related to Flashbots.
Papers & Articles
- Structural Advantages for Integrated Builders in MEV-Boost by Mallesh Pai and Max Resnick looks at integrated searcher-builders and how they outcompete neutral builders though CEX/DEX arbitrage.
- Optimal Dynamic Fees for Blockchain Resources by Davide Crapis, Ciamac C. Moallemi and Shouqiao Wang introduces a framework for designing dynamic fee mechanisms for multiple network resources.
- Ethereum’s Supply Chain, Part 1 by Emperor explores the past, present, and future of the Ethereum’s supply chain, with a focus on issues with the current architecture under PoS and MEV-Boost.
- Enablement of MEV and the Morals of Extracting by Patrick McCorry delves into the ethical considerations of MEV and the concept of fairness in transaction ordering.
- Lessons Earned One Year Post-Merge: Unraveling PBS and its effect on MEV, Block Building, and the Ethereum Network by Sajida Zouarhi review the first year since the Merge, with a focus on MEV, PBS and decentralization.
- Navigating Ethereum’s 2024 Consensus Landscape by Terence Tsao looks at the potential next steps for the Ethereum consensus layer, including work on stability, scalability, and reducing tech debt.
- Introducing ERC-7521: Generalized Intents for Smart Contract Wallets by Stephen Monn introduce ERC-7521 as a standard for creating generalized intents in smart contract wallets.
- An Introduction to Intents and Intent-centric Architectures by Awa Sun Yin looks at generalized intents, intent-centric architectures, and what properties they provide to dApps.
- Typhon’s Chimera Chains by Isaac Sheff describes how Anoma’s Chimera Chains generalize shared sequencers and enable stronger cross-chain atomicity guarantees.
Posts & threads
- Making PEPC-DVT private with BLS Blinded Multi-Signatures by diego explores how BLS Blinded Multi-Signatures can keep the block content private while obtaining signatures from the DVT network.
- A decentralised solver architecture for executing intents on EVM blockchain by Nitanshu Lokhande and Haque Farazul introduces Abstracted Transaction Objects (ATOs) to capture operation-specific information and optimize user intents.
- Grace Deng published a thread on proposer commitments (PCs) that categorizes the various alternatives and explores ways they can be combined.
- Robert Miller published a post to highlight how users of Flashbots Protect can send private transactions to additional builders for much faster inclusion times while benefitting from the same privacy guarantees and MEV refunds.
Talks & Discussions
- Summer '23 Research Seminars by a16z crypto has been expanded with recordings from 4 presentations related to MEV:
- Automated Market Making and Arbitrage Profits in the Presence of Fees by Ciamac C. Moallemi
- High-Frequency Trading and the Design of Financial Markets by Eric Budish
- Transaction Fee Mechanism Design with Active Block Producers by Pranav Garimidi
- Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) for Blockchain Applications by Ari Juels
- Based rollups and decentralized sequencing hosted by Taiko invites Justin Drake, Ben Fisch, Tomasz K. Stańczak and Daniel Wang to discuss based rollups, decentralized sequensing, MEV on L2, and SUAVE.
Other
- ePBS – the infinite buffet by Mike Neuder provides an overview of the evolving discourse related to ePBS, including (1) in-protocol designs, (2) out-of-protocol proposals, and (3) open questions.
- censorship.pics by Toni Wahrstätter is a dashboard that sheds light on the extent of censorship at the different layers of PBS by looking at validators, relays, and builders.
- Memswap.xyz is an alpha release of a MEV-aware protocol for swapping tokens and NFTs using intents and solvers.
Upcoming events
- Sept 27th: ETHconomics at Devconnect invites Barnabé Monnot, Julian Ma and Christine Kim to discuss all things ETHconomics ahead of the Devconnect event on November 15th.
- Oct 5th: MEV-Boost Community Call #6 hosted by Alex Stokes invites the MEV-Boost ecosystem to discuss Deneb updates, open questions and new proposals.
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