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.
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Papers & Articles
- How Exclusive are Ethereum Transactions? Evidence from non-winning blocks by Vabuk Pahari and Andrea Canidio studies blocks submitted to MEV-Boost relays and finds that exclusive transactions, although a minority by count, contribute approximately 80% of fees.
- Thread by Andrea Canidio
- Reply by Data Always
- Not All State is Equal by Ng Wei Han analyzes Ethereum’s state usage patterns, highlighting how most contracts are single-used clones, and suggests opportunities for state expiry and pricing reforms.
- Thread by Ng Wei Han
- Reply by Vitalik Buterin
- Reply by Tim Beiko
- Low-risk defi can be for Ethereum what search was for Google by Vitalik Buterin makes the case that low-risk DeFi has emerged as a sustainable and culturally aligned core application of Ethereum.
- Fusaka-Devnet-5 BPO Analysis by Sam Calder-Mason analyzes data from fusaka-devnet-5 to determine initial BPO values, showing that 15 and 21 max blobs are viable, while 32 blobs introduce issues for bandwidth-constrained full nodes.
- The 6.99% without PBS by lab gremlin explores why proposers at times publish locally built blocks despite being connected to MEV-Boost relays, concluding the reason to be min-bid reversion or proposer misconfiguration, rather than shortcomings of relays or builders.
- Post by lab gremlin
- Family Feud: Who Wins Multi-Slot MEV? by lab gremlin analyzes blocks over six months to measure multi-slot MEV sequences, finding these to be rare and only marginally profitable.
- Fee Mechanisms Beyond EIP-1559 by Dipa discusses the trade-offs between burning and redistributing base fees in terms of on collusion resistance, volatility, and welfare.
- Making Sense of a ZK Staking Node by ladislaus.eth explores Ethereum’s roadmap towards stateless ZK staking nodes for faster, cheaper, and more decentralized validation.
- Proofs of Invalidity by Julian Ma explains why proof of invalidity would be required for block builders to prove the previous block’s validity if the Prover Killers Killer design is not implemented.
- MEVless protocol, the way to anti-MEV by Lawliet Chan describes a protocol designed to prevent front-running and sandwich attacks by constraining builders from seeing transaction content.
Posts & Threads
- ladislaus.eth published a thread sharing publications and collaborations by EF Research from the previous week.
- mteam.eth published a thread exploring the evolution of the EVM via zkVMs, leanVM, RISC-V, and more.
- Titan Relay published a thread announcing support for builders to send hashes instead of payloads for already sent transactions and blobs within the same slot, as well as optimistic V3 submissions.
- Sachin published a post outlining how Facet’s sequencing design allows users to force-include batches of transactions directly into the next L1 block.
Talks & Discussions
- Blackbox Podcast: Your Al is Weak, Until You Add Zero Trust invites @socrates1024 for a conversation on TEEs, the future of private AI, and how confidential compute enables rivals to collaborate securely through projects like BuilderNet.
- From Whiteboard to Mainnet: Macro-finance Model for Proof-of-Stake Ethereum invites Caspar Schwarz-Schilling, Ansgar Dietrichs, and Urban Jermann to present A Macro Finance Model for Proof-of-Stake Ethereum, and discuss the economics of PoS Ethereum.
- Arbitrage Profits at Decentralized Exchanges invites Ciamac C. Moallemi, and Alex Nezlobin to present research on the economics of liquidity provision in AMMs, and LVR under deterministic and generalized block-times, respectively.
- The Rollup: State of The Nation invites Tim Beiko, Joshua Rudolf, and Dankrad Feist for a conversation on the strategic initiatives of Protocol at Ethereum Foundation to: Scale L1, Scale blobs, and Improve UX.
- composability spaces hosted by mteam.eth invites donnoh.eth, Justin Drake, and Joshua Rudolf to discuss based rollups, interoperability, and cross-chain composability.
- All Core Devs - Consensus (ACDC) #165 hosted by Barnabas Busa discussed timelines for Fusaka activation, and next steps for Glamsterdam testing.
- All Core Devs - Testing (ACDT) #54 hosted by Barnabas Busa covered Fusaka devnets, 60M gas limit testing, and Glamsterdam headliners.
- L2 Interop Working Group Call #14 hosted by Joshua Rudolf discussed ENS-based chain registry, L2 multiproving, and Permit3.
- FOCIL Breakout #20 hosted by Jihoon Song covered FOCIL testing and implementation updates.
Other
- Engineering Update - 2025-09-19 by @metachris summarizes recent BuilderNet updates including migration to Gen6 TDX instances, performance benchmarking, and upcoming engineering priorities.
- TLS Certificate Cheat Sheet - OpenSSL & Curl by Chris Hager is a practical TLS quick-reference document covering keys, certs, CSRs, CA chains, validation, and curl testing.
- Post by @metachris
- Interview Study Eth Consensus Layer (call for interviewees) by Stefanie Boss seeks participants for anonymous interviews to better understand the decision-making processes of builders, relays, validators, and other actors in the MEV ecosystem.
- Columbia Engineering and Ethereum Foundation Launch Research Center to Advance Blockchain Infrastructure by Columbia-Ethereum Research Center announces an interdisciplinary hub in partnership with the Ethereum Foundation to support research and education to advance the development and understanding of blockchain protocols and their applications.
- Phala Announces dstack as a Linux Foundation Project announces that dstack is becoming an open source project hosted by the Linux Foundation, adopting their governance, licensing, and IP policies to ensure long-term stability and neutrality.
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