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
- Launching the PBS Foundation: Working Together to Keep Ethereum’s Consensus Layer Decentralized announces the pilot phase of PBS Foundation with the mission to spearhead research pertaining to PBS and provide infrastructure support for those committed to PBS.
- Post by Eugene Leventhal
- Post by Consensys
- Post by Uniswap Foundation
- Post by Fenbushi Capital
- Thread by Coinbase Cloud
- Strategic Bidding Wars in On-chain Auctions by Fei Wu, Thomas Thiery, Stefanos Leonardos and Carmine Ventre study how latency, orderflow, and auction design aspects affect bidding performance and strategy effectiveness in MEV-Boost.
- Execution Tickets by Mike Neuder and Justin Drake details a blockspace market for buying and selling Execution Tickets that entitle the owner to propose future blocks.
- Post by Mike Neuder
- Thread by Alex Nezlobin
- P2P.org’s Staking & Infrastructure Report by P2P gives an overview of the Ethereum infrastructure, including the current state of MEV, PBS, and L2 sequencing.
- Empirical analysis of the impact of block delays on the consensus layer by mxs@kiln.fi presents data on the impact of intentional, and non-intentional, delays by proposers.
- The MEV Book: A Comprehensive Guide To Maximal Extractable Value by Tuukka Tuomikoski and Carlos Monteiro dives into the history and current state of MEV, and explore the potential impact of SUAVE.
- Auctions: context, types of auctions, what is an auction from the Auction Theory Perspective and from the Mechanism Design Perspective, and EIP-1559 as a specific example by Lisa A. explore the applications and significance of auctions in blockchains.
- Reflections #4: Research Recap by Chorus One gives a recap of their research published in 2023, covering topics such as cross-chain MEV, shared security, PBS and latency.
- Timing Games and Implications on MEV extraction by Chorus One provides a summary of The cost of artificial latency in the PBS context by Umberto Natale that highlight observations and key results.
- Analyzing BFT & Proposer-Promised Preconfirmations by Espresso Systems analyze BFT preconfirmations and Proposer-Promised preconfirmations, both external and opt-in protocols run by L1 validators.
- Unlocking PBS with CL Verification of “block.coinbase” (E.G. Multi Tx Flashloans) by Alex Watts presents novel primitives that could be unlocked if builders would sign and prove the ownership of their block’s coinbase address.
- Post by Alex Watts
- Espresso Systems and Offchain Labs release R&D roadmap for Decentralized Timeboost by Espresso Systems presents a roadmap for the development of a decentralized version of Timeboost compatible with the Espresso Sequencer.
- Thread by Espresso Systems
- Thread by Offchain Labs
- Space with Ed Felten and Ben Fisch
- Introducing the Validator Gateway: Boost Your Ethereum Validator Rewards by bloXroute Labs announce a new feature for proposers connected to bloXroute relays that adds an artificial delay in proposal duties to increase rewards.
- What Does It Take To Be a Block Builder by Cryptic Woods introduces penguinbuild.org and its vision to become the largest neutral block builder on Ethereum.
- Loss versus Rebalancing 101 by Alphaist details the mechanisms of LVR, underlying causes and potential countermeasures.
- Back-Testing Transaction Policies with Cryo & Analysis of Preventable DEX Slippage by Shield3 present a library for decoding transaction payloads to detect max slippage and calculate preventable slippage for swaps on Uniswap.
- Thread by Isaac Patka
- Thread by storm
- Timing Games - MEV CC 7 by Data Always provides a summary, transcript, and thoughts on the latest MEV-Boost community call with a focus on timing games.
Posts & Threads
- bloXroute Labs published an announcement to inform that their relays will no longer accept blocks that interact with addresses appearing on the OFAC SDN list.
- Decentralizing Power & The Great Community by Andy shares excerpts from The Public and Its Problems by John Dewey and explore how these relate to the stories surrounding MEV and SUAVE.
- aori ⑁ published a thread to announce the launch of their protocol on Arbitrum to connect CEX-DEX arbitrageurs, searchers, solvers, and market makers through a high-frequency order book.
- Uniswap Foundation published a thread that highlights supported research in 2023 on topics such as cross-chain MEV, pricing orderflow, and MEV estimation.
- CoW DAO published a thread that provides links and summaries of their talks at Devconnect Istanbul on topics such as LVR, MEV, and AMM design.
- Alex Watts published a thread on how SUAVE can improve smart wallets by enabling composable and programmable operation bundling.
- Tarun Chitra published a thread on the type of MEV that appears from a protocol that favors safety over liveness, and vice versa.
- Chorus One published a thread on The cost of artificial latency in the PBS context by Umberto Natale that details the implications of artificial latency in the MEV-Boost auction.
- Titan Builder published a post to notify searchers of a new feature being tested that allows searchers to specify the target position of their bundles within a block.
- Spicypunk.eth published a thread summarizing their research on the challenges with tracking historical CEX-DEX arbitrage, and findings from a two week case study between Osmosis and Binance.
- Jünger published a post on how SGX can be used in multi-proof systems alongside cryptographic proofs, as a way to diversify and minimize potential errors and vulnerabilities.
- Blocknative published a thread to highlight new features of Ethernow, including a filter for private transactions and enhancements to their historical mempool archive.
- API3 published a thread that details a large liquidation that followed an oracle price update to highlight the lack of a mechanisms that can redistribute this value.
Talks & Discussions
- Recordings from censorship.wtf by T&T have been uploaded, the event explored censorship resistance across the Ethereum stack and beyond, with speakers presenting from both Istanbul and Prague.
- Recordings from Good INTENT-ions by Brink have been uploaded with talks on intent-based architectures, MEV, cross-chain intents, and more.
- Cow Swap: Gasless Transactions, MEV Protection, The Best Priced Swaps by blocmates invites Anna George to discuss MEV protection, meta-aggregation, intents, and RFQ-systems.
- Bell Curve: DEXs: Minimizing MEV, Fee Market Developments, and Superior DEX Designs with Michael Ippolito and Dan Robinson recap their latest season and discuss key themes such as MEV mitigation in DEX design, fee market structures, and Uniswap v4.
- Scraping Bits:
- MEV Searcher Commericalization; Competing With UniswapX’s Orderbook invites Joshua Baker to dive into CEX-DEX arbitrage, searcher commercialization, UniswapX, and Aori.
- MEV Chokepoint: Relaying 42% Of All Blocks On Ethereum To Validators invites Uri Klarman to discuss MEV, the current state of PBS, operating MEV-Boost relays, and the broader implications for Ethereum users and validators.
- Protect Yourself Against MEV Sandwich Attacks hosted by Jen invites Sophie Liu and Mark Richardson to provide an overview of sandwich attacks and what users can do to protect themselves.
- StarknetCC: Encrypted mempool and shared sequencers by AJ Park explore how developers can build L3s on Starknet using encrypted mempools and shared sequencers.
Other
- MEV-Share Atomic Arbooors by Flashbots provides insights into the activity and profitability of searchers performing atomic arbitrage via MEV-Share.
- Atomic Arbitrages by hildobby presents data on atomic arbitrage performed on Ethereum and 9 other EVMs.
- libMEV by Cryptic Woods now includes data on block builders’ market share and profits.
- Primo Data is a directory of blockchain data resources.
- Post by Primo Data
- Thread by storm
- Sandwich Detector by EigenPhi is a Telegram mini-app that allows users to search and determine if an address has been sandwiched on Ethereum and BSC in the past 30 days.
Sign up here if you’d like to get The MEV Letter straight to your inbox!
