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.
- Explore all previous editions via The MEV Letter explorer.
Papers & Articles
- Sandwiched and Silent: Behavioral Adaptation and Private Channel Exploitation in Ethereum MEV by Davide Mancino and Davide Rezzoli examines user behavior following sandwich attacks, and how private routing does not guarantee sandwich protection across all DEXes.
- SoK: Speedy Secure Finality by Yash Saraswat and Abhimanyu Nag surveys the design space of fast finality protocols in Ethereum, analyzing trade-offs between dynamic availability, finality, and reorg resilience, with emphasis on RLMD-GHOST, Goldfish, and the 3-Slot Finality protocol.
- Post by Yash Saraswat
- Post by Abhimanyu Nag
- On In-Protocol Gas Futures by Julian Ma explains why EIP-1559 is incompatible with in-protocol gas futures, and outlines what an in-protocol gas futures market could look like to improve fee predictability.
- Block & Blob Propagation with PeerDAS by Pierre-Louis Roman and mempirate analyzes the impact of blob count, with and without PeerDAS, on block latency, attestation rate, and orphan rate, and proposes a supernode seeding network to improve latency and attestations.
- Forum thread by mempirate
- Thread by mempirate
- Improving Aztec Block Production by Conor McMenamin outlines limitations of the current preconfirmation layer for Aztec, and presents two potential paths for improvement.
- Block Building in RISE: A Proof of Real Parallelism by @wisdom details the based sequencing, and deterministic parallel execution architecture of RISE Chain.
- I Arbitraged USDC. No One Noticed. by Armv7l recounts a persistent USDC mispricing on CoinEx that enabled profitable cross-exchange arbitrage via a reverse-engineered Bitget API until the gap closed.
- Ethereum Is No Longer a Dark Forest by Kevin Lepsoe details how ETHGas’s Realtime Blocks enable fast preconfirmations by subdividing L1 blocks into synthetic 50–100ms sub-blocks.
Posts & Threads
- Toni Wahrstätter published a post describing the current market shares of relays and builders connected to MEV-Boost.
- L2BEAT published a thread detailing how Ethereum Interoperability Layer enables trustless cross-chain execution via ERC-4337 and Cross-chain Liquidity Providers (XLPs).
Talks & Discussions
- CBER Forum: BuilderNet by @Quintus provides an overview of BuilderNet and how Ethereum’s block building ecosystem has evolved over time.
- CBER Forum: Becoming Immutable How Ethereum is Made by Andrea Canidio presents an empirical study of blocks that did not win the MEV-Boost auction, concluding that exclusive orderflow accounts for around 85% of the winning block value.
- Hasu on: MEV, Market Structure & the Future of Crypto Finance invites @Hasu to discuss the evolving MEV ecosystem, DeFi innovations, and the future of options in crypto.
- Post by Derive.xyz
- Post by Hasu
- ETHPanda Talk: From Nethermind to the Ethereum Foundation: Tomasz’s Journey as an Ethereum Core Developer invites Tomasz K. Stańczak for a conversation on Ethereum core development, coordination at the Ethereum Foundation, cross-chain interoperability, AI, and more.
- The Defiant: Ethereum is committed to growing – without ever relinquishing its values invites Marissa Posner and Yoav Weiss to present how Ethereum Interoperability Layer is designed to make Ethereum’s rollup ecosystem seamlessly interoperate.
- The Defiant: Uniswap is about to “turn on the switch.” invites Hayden Adams to discuss the UNIfication Proposal to enable protocol fees, consolidate Uniswap Foundation functions into Uniswap Labs, and implement a UNI burn mechanism.
- Post by The Defiant
- Deeply Intents: Cross-chain Money Legos invites Orest Tarasiuk to discuss interoperability, real-time proofs, encrypted mempools, and t1.
- Deeply Intents: Application Controlled Execution (ACE) allows apps to capture value invites Ludwig Thouvenin for a conversation on MEV mitigation, Angstrom, Brontes, and more.
- All Core Devs - Execution (ACDE) #226 hosted by Ansgar Dietrichs covered zkEVM roadmap updates, Hegotá preparations, testing of Glamsterdam EIPs, and more.
- L2 Interop Working Group Call #18 hosted by Joshua Rudolf invites Noah Pravecek to present ZKsync L1 Interop: A Path To Scaling Ethereum’s Liquidity, followed by a discussion on the Open Intents Framework.
- Agenda by Joshua Rudolf
- EIP-7732 Breakout Room Call #29 hosted by Justin Traglia discussed progress on ePBS client implementations and testing.
Other
- Hegota Upgrade EIP Proposal Timelines by Ethereum Foundation announces the initiation of the Hegotá upgrade process, and the headline EIP proposals and selection.
Sign up here if you’d like to get The MEV Letter straight to your inbox!
Explore previous editions via The MEV Letter explorer
Join Flashbots
Happy new years!