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
- Geographical Centralization Resilience in Ethereum’s Block-Building Paradigms by @syang, @boz1, Fei Wu, and Fan Zhang has been updated to include theoretical foundations that explain the structural reasons why Ethereum’s block-building paradigms are not geographically neutral, and identify which protocol knobs amplify or dampen these effects.
- When Frontrunning is Alchemy by @dataalways details how aggregate sandwich attack statistics can be massively distorted by low-liquidity token swaps, overstating bot profits and user losses.
- Economic Security of VDF-Based Randomness Beacons: Models, Thresholds, and Design Guidelines by Zhenhang Shang and Kani Chen presents a formal framework for the economic security of VDF-based randomness beacons.
- Blocks Are Dead. Long Live Blobs by Toni Wahrstätter explains how Block-in-Blobs (BiB) encodes transaction data into blobs, enabling validators to sample data rather than download full execution payloads.
- Optimizing a $100B Market: Effects of Latency Reduction on ETH Staking Revenue by Moritz Grundei, Slobodan Sudaric-Hefner, Sajida Zouarhi, and Muriel Médard analyzes how reducing network latency increases validator revenue by extending the usable slot time and enabling higher-value bids from builders.
- Same-Slot Decryption for LUCID: Optional N Execution with N+1 Fallback by Murat Akdeniz presents a method to achieve same-slot decryption for LUCID by introducing slashable builder collateral.
Posts & Threads
- Thomas Coratger published a thread summarizing Unblocking faster finality with decoupled consensus by Francesco D’Amato which presents a design to decouple block production and finality using the Goldfish protocol.
Talks & Discussions
- Recordings from EthCC[9] hosted by Ethereum France have been uploaded:
- Competition through Spam on L2s by @Christoph and @BrunoMr
- Encrypted Mempools - State of the Art vs the MEV Perspective by @jonathan
- Optimising Block Building with Genetic Algorithms by @luiscorreia
- The End of Extractive Apps: Designing for User Agency by @albicodes
- The First Ordinal Commodity by Kubi Mensah
- From MEV-Boost to ePBS: The Protocolization of Proposer-Builder Separation by Terence Tsao
- EVM Workloads in the Wild: Measuring Gas, State Growth, and State Sensitivity Across L1 and L2 by Lioba Heimbach
- The Return of Sandwiches: MEV and Sequencer Design on Layer-2s by Krzysztof Gogol
- How fast is fast finality? by Ellie Davidson
- When Theory Meets Mainnet: Intent-Based Trading at Scale by Mariia Keiko
- Sedna: How users can enforce affordable privacy, censorship-resistance and MEV protection in MCP chains by Alejandro Ranchal-Pedrosa
- OC3 2026: Proof of Cloud Data Center Execution Assurance for Confidential VMs by @rezabfil presents results from Proof of Cloud: Data Center Execution Assurance for Confidential VMs by @rezabfil, @Moe, @socrates1024, Stefan Genchev, @Quintus, Georg Carle, and @jonathan, which introduces Data Center Execution Assurance (DCEA) as a method to extend remote attestation for Confidential VMs by cryptographically binding the CVM execution to verifiable cloud infrastructure.
- FOCIL Breakout #32, April 07, 2026 hosted by Jihoon Song covered FOCIL testing and implementation updates.
- Glamsterdam Repricings #5, April 1, 2026 hosted by Maria Inês Silva discussed EIP-8037: State Creation Gas Cost Increase and updates from bal-devnet-3.
Other
- Contender v0.9.1 by Flashbots improves stability and observability of long-running spammers, live metrics reporting, and more.
- Dstack Core Contributors Call #3 | Thur, 9 April 2026 by @albicodes invites Dstack contributors and builders to a Community Call to share ideas, showcase demos, and help shape the future of confidential computing.
- ERC8211: Smart Batching by Mislav Javor, Filip Dujmušić, Filipp Makarov, and Venkatesh Rajendran introduces Smart Batching as a new standard for agents to execute multi-step cross-chain DeFi strategies with a single signature.
- txdelay.xyz - Ethereum Inclusion Time by Toni Wahrstätter shows the median wait time for transactions sent to the mempool with max_fee_per_gas ≥ basefee and priority fees ≥ $0.01.
- Dispute Explorer by donnoh.eth is a dispute explorer for optimistic rollups, showing contested state roots on OP Mainnet, Base, Ink and Unichain.
- Post by donnoh.eth
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