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
- The Impact of Market Conditions and Fee Algorithms on the Design of a Competitive AMM by Vladislav Volosnikov, Alexander Pimenov and Vladimir Tikhomirov analyze LP profitability in AMMs under different market conditions, and explores options to implement dynamic fee mechanisms.
- Research Note: Review of Maximal Extractable Value and Blockchain Oracles by Rebecca Humphry, Pavle Avramovic, Francis Acevedo, Sami Alkhair and Dr Arthur Gervais examine MEV and oracles in DeFi and discuss regulatory actions for market integrity and consumer protection.
- TEE Party with SUAVE: Could Trusted Execution Environments Replace Trusted Actors? by Miha Lotric provides an overview of TEEs and examines how SUAVE utilizes TEEs for programmable privacy and reducing dependencies on trusted intermediaries.
- Announcing Suave-std by Ferran introduce suave-std – a collection of Solidity contracts and libraries designed to streamline the development process for SUAPPs.
- Grounded Relay: Superpowers from Relay Coordination by Drew Van der Werff explores the potential for MEV-Boost relays to offer additional products and services to validators and builders.
- The price is right: Realigning proposer-builder incentives with predictive MEV-burn by Thomas Thiery summarize key features and tradeoffs, map out the design space, and propose a new design for a single slot, live auction MEV-burn mechanism.
- Minimal ePBS - Beacon Chain Changes by Terence Tsao details ePBS, its essential components from the beacon chain perspective, and areas that require further research.
- Inclusion lists: execution, consensus, & engine spec overview by Mike Neuder presents a minimal potential spec for EIP-7547, outlining changes to execution specs, consensus specs, and execution APIs.
- Consider the ePBS by Mike Neuder describes the February 6th incident that caused 9 missed slots and details how ePBS would handle similar situations.
- Astria: The Shared Sequencer Network by Elizabeth presents the design of Astria’s shared sequencer and how it’s intended to provide rollups with fast finality, censorship resistance, composability guarantees, and decentralization.
- Preconfirmations: The Fulfillment-Delivery Paradigm by Primev explores the applications of preconfirmations and how they can be used to mitigate execution risk.
- Uniswap V4 hook: LVR-minimization with Per-block conversion vs. Futures contracts by sm-stack and chris compares designs to minimize LVR on Uniswap V4 based on simulations that incorporate the Diamond Protocol.
- CoW Swap: Intents, MEV, and Batch Auctions by Cookies Research details how CoW Swap use an intent-based architecture and batch auctions to match orders and reduce MEV.
- MEV meets DAG: Exploring MEV in DAG-based blockchains by Rohan Shrothrium and Samuel Laferriere analyze how the ordering of transactions on chains that use Narwhal DAG-based consensus mechanism, like Sui and Aptos, impacts MEV.
- mevAuction: a Multiple-Winner Auction System by mev.io describes how mevAuction introduce separate auctions for Top-of-Block and Rest-of-Block, and enables proposers to sell future block space.
- Splitting the block by Philipp Zahn provides technical details for mevAuction’s separate auctions, and future block space market.
- Off-Chain Bundles by merkle introduce the ability for searchers connected to the merkle builder to reduce gas fees by separating off-chain compute from on-chain settlement.
- The Language of Value: Formally Expressing MEV Opportunities by mteam propose a unified format for representing and communicating MEV opportunities.
Posts & Threads
- Alex Stokes published a thread outlining open questions that needs to be resolved in order to enshrine PBS in the Ethereum protocol.
- Potuz published a thread critiquing the current PBS architecture, the use of optimistic relaying, and advocates for a shift towards ePBS.
- Terence Tsao published a post that highlights the benefits of ePBS, addresses common misunderstandings and remaining problems.
- Anders Elowsson published a post detailing the rationale behind their candidate for a new reward curve designed to find an equilibrium between validator rewards and network security.
- snoopy published a thread on why OFAs will become less profitable as markets mature.
- Reply by 0xprincess
- Alex Nezlobin published a thread that highlights a JIT+sandwich attack in the USDC/USDT Uniswap v3 pool by jaredfromsubway.
Talks & Discussions
- Missed Slot Penalties & Timing Games: Eth’s Growing Pains w/ EF & SMG hosted by Fenbushi Capital invites Mike Neuder, Max Resnick and ballsyalchemist to discuss the 9 missed slots on February 6th due to a bug in the optimistic mode of bloXroute max profit relay.
- Ethereum Sequencing and Preconfirmations Call #0 by Ethereum Foundation invited teams running MEV infrastructure and protocol researchers to discuss sequencing and preconfirmation.
- Atlas Office Hours 1: Whitepaper deep dive and protocol Q&A hosted by Atlas invites Alex Watts, Ben Basche and Uri Klarman for a discussion on the Atlas Whitepaper, MEV, intents and execution abstraction.
- Scraping Bits: Automating Uniswap Strategies: Providing Liquidity Has No Benefit?! invites Kassandra to discuss Uniswap strategies and liquidity provision through Arrakis Finance.
- Ethereum Cat Herders: PEEPanEIP#127: EIP-7251:Increase MAX_EFFECTIVE_BALANCE invites dapplion and Mike Neuder to discuss the design and motivation behind EIP-7251.
Other
- Benjamin Hunter published a post mortem of the February 6th incident where one of bloXroute relays running in optimistic mode failed to deliver 9 blocks.
- Multi-Agent Security Research Sprint by Apart Research was a two day researchathon focused on challenges in multi-agent security, how AI systems might collude and where cooperation can fail.
Upcoming events
- Feb 21: MEV-Boost community call #8 hosted by Alex Stokes invites the MEV-Boost community to discuss Deneb, open questions, and new proposals.
- Feb 23: Penn Blockchain Conference 2024 by Penn Blockchain brings together crypto researchers and practitioners for a series of panels, including a panel titled MEV - The Dark Forest featuring Sarah Allen, rain&coffee, Jon Charbonneau, Tarun Chitra and magmar.
- Feb 27: Multi-Prover Hack Day by Phala Network, Automata Network and The Graph will feature presentations, panels and workshops on the intersection of TEEs and crypto.
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