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
- Designing Ethereum’s Geographical (De)Centralization Beyond the Atlantic by @syang, @boz1, Fei Wu, and Fan Zhang studies the impact of protocol design on geographical decentralization, and finds that PBS gives proposers more equal access to value, provided relays are strategically placed.
- Flashblocks: Deep Dive - 250ms preconfirmations on OP Mainnet by Yashvardhan Kukreja announces that Flashblocks are live on OP mainnet, streaming sub-blocks every 250ms to improve transaction speed, reliability, and user experience.
- When Priority Fails: Revert-Based MEV on Fast-Finality Rollups by Krzysztof Gogol, Manvir Schneider, and Claudio Tessone examines the economics of transaction reverts on rollups, demonstrating they are not always accidental failures but an equilibrium outcome of certain MEV strategies.
- Dstack: A Zero Trust Framework for Confidential Containers by Shunfan Zhou, Kevin Wang, and Hang Yin presents dstack as a comprehensive framework that transforms raw TEE technology into a true Zero Trust platform tailored for decentralized Web3 applications.
- Bribers, Bribers on The Chain, Is Resisting All in Vain? Trustless Consensus Manipulation Through Bribing Contracts by Bence Soóki-Tóth, István András Seres, Kamilla Kara, Ábel Nagy, Balázs Pejó, and Gergely Biczók evaluates three novel bribery attacks targeting Ethereum validators to; fork the chain, exit the protocol, or bias RANDAO.
- The Express Lane to Spam and Centralization: An Empirical Analysis of Arbitrum’s Timeboost by Johnnatan Messias and Christof Ferreira Torres analyzes auctions from Arbitrum’s Timeboost from April to July 2025, arguing it fails to deliver on its stated goals of fairness, decentralization, and spam reduction.
- Toward Semantic Block Chunking by Toni Wahrstätter presents a chunked block model that separates independently verifiable execution chunks and state diffs, enabling streaming validation and reducing propagation latency.
- BALs for Proposer Commitments by Jason Vranek proposes modifications to BALs to simplify and standardize proposer commitment protocols, with a focus on execution preconfirmations.
- Post by Jason Vranek
- The importance of full-stack openness and verifiability by Vitalik Buterin emphasizes how increasing reliance on digital systems across finance, health, governance, and security necessitates open and verifiable infrastructure to mitigate centralization risks and preserve user autonomy.
- Introducing The Compact by 0age, Chris Cashwell, Mark Gretzke, and Christian Angelopoulos details the release of The Compact v1 as an ownerless ERC-6909 contract for reusable resource locks that enables tokens to be credibly committed in exchange for performing actions across chains.
Posts & Threads
- Paul Grewal published a thread arguing that labeling L2 sequencers as exchanges is misleading as they function as neutral infrastructure, deferring any matching rules to an app’s smart contracts.
- Thread by Jesse Pollak
- Reply by Vitalik Buterin
- Reply by Joshua Rudolf
- 0xprincess published a thread announcing the launch of TOOL on the Hoodi testnet as a permissionless co-processor network with 1-second block times and verifiable end-to-end privacy.
- hildobby published a thread highlighting that blobs per block have reached the Pectra target of 6 for the first time, primarily driven by Base and Worldcoin.
- Ethereum.org published a thread by Jonathan detailing the tradeoffs of various staking methods, and describes how independent home staking strengthens Ethereum’s resilience and decentralization.
Talks & Discussions
- All Core Devs - Execution (ACDE) #221 hosted by Tim Beiko covered Fusaka testnet release schedule and client releases, 60M as the default gas limit in Fusaka, and Glamsterdam updates.
- Agenda by nixo.eth
- Thread by Pooja Ranjan
- Post by Tim Beiko
- Post by trent.eth
- Notes by Yash Kamal Chaturvedi
- All Core Devs - Testing (ACDT) #55 hosted by Mario Vega discussed Fusaka activation on testnets, client releases, Glamsterdam testing, and more.
- Agenda by danceratopz
- Thread by Pooja Ranjan
- Ethproofs Call #5 hosted by Justin Drake covered the latest updates related to Ethproofs, and invited donnoh.eth for a presentation on native rollups.
- Thread by Will Corcoran
- Thread by tcoratger
- Post by donnoh.eth
- EIP-7928 Breakout #3 hosted by Toni Wahrstätter discussed design choices related to BALs, handling self-destruct within transactions, and using account storage root commitments to improve speed.
- EIP-7732 Breakout Room Call #24 hosted by Justin Traglia discussed testing and client updates related to ePBS.
- Agenda by Justin Traglia
- Post by Pooja Ranjan
- FOCIL Breakout #21 hosted by Jihoon Song covered FOCIL testing and implementation updates.
Other
- MEV-Boost v1.10-alpha5 by Flashbots has been released with support for the upcoming Fusaka upgrade on the Holešky, Sepolia, and Hoodi testnets.
- MEV-Boost Relay v0.32.0-rc2 by Flashbots has been released with support for the upcoming Fusaka upgrade on the Holešky, Sepolia, and Hoodi testnets.
- MEV-Share Client (Rust) by lab gremlin is a Rust client library for interacting with the MEV-Share protocol.
- Fusaka Testnet Announcement by Ethereum Foundation details client releases and activation timelines for Fusaka across the Holešky, Sepolia, and Hoodi testnets, starting October 1st.
- Post by Tim Beiko
- Post by Alex Stokes
- Sunnyside Devnet Updates - 09/30 by Test in Prod (Sunnyside Labs) shares results from a devnet running fusaka-devnet-5 spec on 1700 nodes, analyzing blob throughput, bandwidth bottlenecks, and client performance.
- Web3 to Wall Street Stablecoins 2030 by Citi analyzes the institutional adoption of stablecoins with broader integration into traditional financial infrastructure, projecting a multi-trillion-dollar market by 2030.
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