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.
Papers & Articles
- Order Flow Exclusivity and Value Extraction Mechanisms: An Analysis of Ethereum Builder Centralization by Ao Zhang, Yunwen Liu, Ren Zhang, Yingdi Shan, and Yongwei Wu examines block builder centralization from September 2023 to August 2025 by measuring exclusive order flow, non-atomic MEV, and changes in builder market structure.
- Extending Blockchain Untraceability with Plausible Deniability by Eunchan Park, Kyonghwa Song, Won Hoi Kim, Wonho Song, Min Suk Kang analyzes covert asset transfers that are disguised as MEV extraction, where staged transactions resemble ordinary sandwich attacks or arbitrage.
- Adversarial procurement in blockchains by Maryam Bahrani, Michael Neuder, and S. Matthew Weinberg studies how blockchain protocols can procure zk-EVM-style proofs from pseudonymous provers under adversarial behavior and liveness-fault risk.
- Arbitrage Analysis in Polymarket NBA Markets by Guang Cheng, Jiaxin Yang, and Haoxuan Zou conducts an empirical analysis of arbitrage in Polymarket NBA markets by measuring its frequency, duration, profitability, and liquidity limits.
- Arbitrage and the Stability of AMM Price Tracking by Peihao Li, Nadia Dahmani, and Wenqi Cai models AMM price deviations and studies conditions under which arbitrage is sufficient to keep AMM prices aligned with external reference prices.
- State Twins: An Off-Chain Substrate for Agentic Reasoning over Decentralized Finance Protocols by Ian C. Moore presents an off-chain simulation layer for AMM pools that helps DeFi agents evaluate trades, risks, and strategies before acting.
- Clear Signing: Making Transaction Approvals Safer on Ethereum by Hester Bruikman announces an open standard to replace wallet approval prompts with human-readable transaction confirmations using ERC-7730 descriptors.
- Upgrading Finality - Edition 1 by Ben Edgington outlines a staged path to achieve faster finality without reducing validator diversity, starting with decoupling finality from the rest of the consensus process.
- Post by Ben Edgington
- Mapping the Strawmap: Ethereum’s Big Course Correction by Lucas Tcheyan analyzes the L1 Strawmap by EF Protocol as a roadmap for scaling Ethereum while preserving credible neutrality, censorship resistance, and security.
- EIP-8025: bringing optional execution proofs to Hegotá by ladislaus.eth analyzes EIP-8025 as an optional first step toward block validation through zkEVM proofs instead of local re-execution.
- Introducing EIP-8182: Add Private Transfers to Ethereum by Tom Lehman presents EIP-8182 as a way to enable native private transfers using a shielded pool and ZK proofs.
Posts & Threads
- PropAMM by Gattaca are reference scripts for trading against propAMM protocols through Titan’s bundle relay.
Talks & Discussions
- Recordings from ETHPrague hosted by Duct Tape and PWN have been uploaded:
- Space Fabric: Reinventing Hardware Architecture for Orbital Infrastructure by Filip Rezabek
- Vitalik & Jordi Baylina Fireside chat with Jordi Baylina and Vitalik Buterin
- The Access Layer by Oskar Thoren
- Breaking Rollups: How Sequencer Design Shapes Your L2’s Attack Surface by Adrià Torralba-Agell
- The Gap Between ‘Included’ and ‘Executed’ - A Preconf Deep Dive by Kumar Satyarth
- EIP-8141: Frame Transaction deep dive by Alexander Forshtat
- Reducing PeerDAS Bandwidth Requirements by Daniel Knopik
- The first 100 days of Fusaka and the future of PeerDAS by LEO
- Unf**king the RPC layer by Lukas
- Indexed Podcast: The State of Tokenization in 2026 discusses the State of Tokenization by Pantera Capital and how the landscape of RWAs is evolving.
- Staking Nerd Talk: Glamsterdam, Stakemap, Lean Ethereum summarizes progress on Glamsterdam, Hegotá planning, the L1 Strawmap, and more.
- All Core Devs - Execution (ACDE) #236, May 7, 2026 hosted by nixo.eth covered updates from the Soldøgn interop event, Glamsterdam devnets, Hegotá non-headliners, and more.
- All Core Devs - Consensus (ACDC) #178, May 14, 2026 hosted by parithosh discussed Glamsterdam devnets, Hegotá updates, and more.
- All Core Devs - Testing (ACDT) #79, May 11, 2026 hosted by parithosh discussed outcomes from the Soldøgn interop event, Glamsterdam devnet updates, and debug RPC.
- Glamsterdam Repricings #7, May 13, 2026 hosted by Maria Inês Silva covered EIP-8037 updates, EIP-2780, EIP-8038, and more.
- Fast Confirmation Rule (FCR) #7, May 12, 2026 hosted by Will Corcoran covered specification updates, client implementations, and testing of Fast Confirmation Rule.
Other
- Contender v0.10.1 by Flashbots adds support for custom transaction endpoints and improves server stability and long-running spam funding behavior.
- Protocol Cluster Updates: May 2026 by Will Corcoran, Kev Wedderburn, and Fredrik Svantes provides an update on EF Protocol priorities and team leads following the Soldøgn interop event.
- Post by Will Corcoran
- Post by Barnabé Monnot
- Post by raulk
- The State Of Tokenization by Pantera Capital analyzes the evolution and current landscape of RWA in terms of sectors, issuance, redemptions, and more.
- User Research: Uncovering Problems in the Private Transfers Space by Privacy Stewards of Ethereum studies barriers to achieve private transfers on Ethereum, highlighting ZK proving costs, fragmented anonymity sets, DeFi composability, wallet integration, and regulatory uncertainty.
- Hermetic by raulk is a modular playground for access-layer privacy in blockchain interactions, pairing Tor at the network layer with Railgun at the transaction-graph layer.
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