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
- decentralized building: wat do? by Flashbots shares an updated perspective on a phased SUAVE roadmap, and details how projects such as BuilderNet, Signal‑Boost, Flashnet, rblib, mosaik, DCEA, and ADCNet are components of a trajectory toward realizing a permissionless, global, and decentralized block building market.
- Network Anonymized Mempools by Flashbots introduces Flashnet as a low-latency anonymous broadcast protocol for Ethereum’s execution pipeline, complementing onchain privacy and censorship-resistance mechanisms and advancing BuilderNet toward the SUAVE vision.
- Mapping Public and Private JIT Liquidity Dynamics in Ethereum’s Builder Ecosystem by Koshi Ota and Davide Rezzoli presents an empirical analysis of JIT on Uniswap v3 from January 2024 to September 2025, quantifying how realized JIT profits are reflected in fees paid to builders at the builder-searcher-pair level.
- Liquidation Dynamics in DeFi and the Role of Transaction Fees by Agathe Sadeghi and Zachary Feinstein analyzes liquidation dynamics in DeFi lending, models optimal OEV sandwich attacks, and outlines how fees can deter price manipulation in AMMs while compensating LPs.
- Let Leaders Play Games: Improving Timing in Leader-based Consensus by Rasheed M, Parth Desai, and Sujit Gujar presents a leader-based consensus design that selects two proposers per slot which compete for block propagation as a mechanism to curtail timing games.
- Executive Leadership Update by the Ethereum Foundation Board announces a leadership transition with Tomasz K. Stańczak stepping down as co-ED and Bastian Aue taking over the role, working alongside Hsiao-Wei Wang.
- Post by Ethereum Foundation
- Post by Aya Miyaguchi
- Post by Bastian Aue
- An update from Tomasz by Tomasz K. Stańczak details their decision to step down as co-ED of the Ethereum Foundation, and shares an outlook on EF’s 2026 roadmap and strategy.
- Protocol Priorities Update for 2026 by Ethereum Foundation recaps accomplishments in 2025 with Pectra and Fusaka, and details how the Protocol efforts in 2026 will be categorized under 3 new tracks: Scale, Improve UX, and Harden the L1.
- Announcing the Platform Team at EF by Joshua Rudolf announces Platform as a new team inside the Ethereum Foundation focused on improving the L1-L2 relationships and building a cohesive system across protocol development, integration, and strategy.
Posts & Threads
- Toni Wahrstätter published a post explaining how EIP-7976 and EIP-7981 in Glamsterdam will introduce reprisings to enable safe scaling while keeping worst-case scenarios under control.
- Vitalik Buterin published a post arguing that decentralized protocols like Ethereum must preserve permissionlessness and censorship resistance, and advocates for building value-aligned full-stack ecosystems beyond the base layer.
- Vitalik Buterin published a post reviewing the current state of prediction markets and advocates for a shift towards hedging and insurance, rather than gambling.
- Tomasz K. Stańczak published a thread outlining 5 steps to drive Ethereum research, development, and network upgrades via LLMs.
- Security Alliance published a thread announcing SEAL Safe Harbor v3.0 with the capability to support over 100 chains, onchain verification, and more.
Talks & Discussions
- Dstack Core Community Call on Thu, Feb 5 covered the latest progress of Dstack and discussed the future of confidential computing with demos and presentations.
- Forum post by @albicodes
- Post by PhalaNetwork
- Post by @albicodes
- Post by Evan Flow
- Recordings from EthBoulder has been uploaded:
- Post-Quantum Security & Ethereum’s 2026 Roadmap by Tomasz K. Stańczak
- The Next Chapter: AI, Credible Neutrality & Ethereum’s Role in a Polycrisis by Alex Stokes
- Scaling Ethereum’s Networking Stack: Mempool, Blobs & Congestion Control by Csaba Kiraly
- The Ethereum Privacy Stack: Private Reads, Networking & the Hidden Leak by Andy Guzma
- Ethereum Core Governance Explained: Myths, Hard Forks & How to Participate by nixo.eth
- ZK-EVM, Optional Proofs & Lean Execution: Scaling Ethereum with Zero Knowledge by Cody Gunton
- Danny Ryan on: leading crypto’s biggest upgrade, paving his own path, and bringing $120T to Ethereum invites Danny Ryan to discuss their Ethereum journey, decentralization vs. counterparty risk, Etherealize, and more.
- Post by Etherealize
- LI.FI: The Ethereum Interop Layer (EIL) Explained invites Marissa Posner and Yoav Weiss for a conversation on account abstraction and enabling trustless multi-chain execution with Ethereum Interop Layer (EIL).
- Thread by LI.FI
- Post by Arjun Chand
- Tomasz K. Stańczak, Co-Executive Director of The Ethereum Foundation with James of Ârc invites Tomasz K. Stańczak for a conversation on Layer 2s, the journey of Nethermind, and what it’s like being co-ED at Ethereum Foundation.
- All Core Devs - Execution (ACDE) #230, Feb 12, 2026 hosted by Ansgar Dietrichs covered Glamsterdam devnets, Hegotá headliners, and LUCID encrypted mempool.
- All Core Devs - Testing (ACDT) #70, February 16, 2026 hosted by Barnabas Busa discussed updates from blob-devnet-0, bal-devnet-2, and epbs-devnet-0, Hegotá headliners, and gas limit testing.
- L2 Interop Working Group Call #19 hosted by Joshua Rudolf discussed onchain registry for chain IDs, updated on Open Intents Framework, and more.
- Fast Confirmation Rule (FCR) breakout room #02 | Feb 3, 2026 hosted by Mikhail Kalinin covered specification, client implementations, and testing of Fast Confirmation Rule (FCR).
Other
- Flashbots at ETHDenver 2026 by @vanlo shares information on blockbuilding.wtf: ACE Night and information.wtf hosted by Flashbots at ETHDenver.
- Shape Rotator Virtual Hackathon hosted by IC3, Flashbots_X, and Convent is a two-week virtual hackathon starting on March 9th, where participants work directly with the authors of seminal research papers spanning TEEs and AI-enabled applications, cryptographic primitives, DeFi security, and mechanism design.
- Thread by IC3
- Thread by Encode Club
- Gasrepricing.com by EF Protocol Support details the impact of gas repricings scheduled to go live in the Glamsterdam upgrade.
- EIP-7928: Annotated Specification by Toni Wahrstätter provides an overview of BALs, and how it’s integrated into the execution-specs.
- Post by Toni Wahrstätter.
- Ethereum Privacy Ecosystem mapping by Web3Privacy now maps the growing Ethereum privacy ecosystem across advocacy, applications, infrastructure, and more.
- Headliner, PFI, CFI, SFI EIPs: The Ethereum Upgrade Pipeline by ECHInstitute outlines the stages of how EIPs are iterated, tested, and ultimately included in network upgrades.
- Ethereum Protocol Studies 2026 by Josh Davis and Mario Havel announces an updated format for EPS in 2026 with new tracks covering cryptography, lean consensus and zkEVM.
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