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
- Centralization in Block Building and Proposer-Builder Separation by Maryam Bahrani, Pranav Garimidi and Tim Roughgarden examine decentralization in PBS by looking at the competition in the builder market and decentralization among proposers.
- Sirrah: Speedrunning a TEE Coprocessor by Andrew Miller, Mateusz Morusiewicz and Frieder Paape presents a minimalist demo of extending a blockchain with confidential computing using TEEs, and details the development of a MEV-aware auction.
- Announcing Oval: Earn Protocol Revenue by Capturing Oracle MEV by Hart Lambur introduces Oval as a MEV capture mechanism that enables protocols to monetize the value they produce when consuming Chainlink oracle data.
- Thread by UMA
- Space: Introducing Oval with Hart Lambur, manny, Chris Maree and Matt Rice
- Thread by Shea Ketsdever
- FRP-34: Do backrun auctions protect traders? by Andrew W. Macpherson presents results from their research that studied the game theory of exotic blockchain queues exemplified by products such as MEV-Share and MEV-Blocker.
- FRP Unconference by Sarah Allen details the virtual event hosted by Flashbots last week to celebrate Flashbots Research Proposals (FRPs) with lightning talks and a town hall.
- Thread by Sarah Allen
- Recordings by Flashbots
- Properties of issuance level: consensus incentives and variability across potential reward curves by Anders Elowsson analyzes Ethereum staking economics and how reducing issuance affects consensus incentives and reward variability for proposers.
- Illuminating Trust Reliance in Ethereum’s Transaction Supply Chain by Miha Lotric ​​dives into the trust dependencies introduced by PBS and OFAs and whether more trust-minimized models are possible.
- Announcing OEV Network: The ZK-rollup to capture all oracle extractable value by API3 introduces the OEV Network as a zk-Rollup designed to capture OEV from apps on any chain.
- Scaling Security: Multi-Prover Implementation on Scroll by Haichen Shen presents a multi-proof system that incorporates SGX Prover by Automata Network as a secondary prover to Scroll.
- TEE Prover with Scroll by Automata Network provides an overview of SGX Prover, designed to improve prover diversity and the overall resilience of rollups.
- Phala’s 2024 Path: Coprocessor for blockchains—AI, Hooks and DePin by Marvin Tong reveals their 2024 roadmap and key focus areas building coprocessors for smart contracts, DePIN and AI.
- Shutterized OP Stack Testnet Announcement and Roadmap by Shutter details their development of an encrypted, shutterized mempool for the OP stack designed to eliminate frontrunning and increase censorship resistance.
- On Climbing the Stat Arb (CEX/DEX) Leaderboard, Comparative Advantage and Careers, and My Future in Crypto by Daniel McKinnon describes the challenges, strategies, and insights gained from building one of the top performing CEX/DEX-arbitrage bot on Avalanche.
- MEV BooTEE: Partial Block Building with TEEs by Oana Barbu presents an integrated builder-relayer design that utilizes a TEE to construct blocks comprising a builder’s ToB (Top of Block) and a proposer’s RoB (Rest of Block).
- Thread by Oana Barbu
- Gas Sponsorship Idea by Quintus Kilbourn presents an approach to gas sponsorship where apps are able to pay gas for users via SUAVE.
- Agate - A Relay Data Indexer by 0xpanoramix introduces Agate, an open-source data indexer for MEV-Boost relays that stores data in a Postgres database and can be run locally.
- Validator consolidation in EIP-7251 by Francesco D’Amato, Mike Neuder, and Mikhail Kalinin explains EIP-7251, designed to increase validators’ maximum balance to 2048 ETH and introduces in-protocol consolidation.
- Post by Mike Neuder
- Post by Mike Neuder
Posts & Threads
- Kubi Mensah published a thread that details the events that led to the temporary shutdown of Titan Builder on January 18th.
- Yoni published a post that visualizes the increased delay in the distribution of winning block bid times during the last four months.
- EV3 Sal published a post on how MEV extraction could occur in DePIN by hardware manufacturers manipulating the ordering of hardware onboarded onchain.
Talks & Discussions
- Bell Curve: The Solution to Oracle Extractable Value invites Hart Lambur and Quintus Kilbourn to dive into OEV and how Oval enables protocols to capture this value.
- Into the Bytecode: UMA, Across, Oval, and MEV capture for protocols invites Hart Lambur for a conversation on UMA, Across and how protocols can capture OEV with Oval.
- Scraping Bits:
- Exploring the Hidden Creativity of Exclusive Web3 Exploits invites Alex the Entreprenerd to talk about exploits, audits, and how to build more resilient systems.
- Curve Vyper Compiler Bug Whitehat & Building Ecosystem Tools with Addison goes into detail of the whitehat rescue that saved $6M in the wake of the Vyper compiler bug, building Thunderhead, and more.
- Node Operator Community Call #14 hosted by Lido includes a presentation by Andreas H that provides an overview of Eden Network’s Mempool Stream service.
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