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
- Transaction Fee Mechanism Design in a Post-MEV World by Maryam Bahrani, Pranav Garimidi and Tim Roughgarden show that TFM design is fundamentally more difficult with active block producers than with passive ones, and that no TFM can simultaneously be incentive compatibility for both users and active block proposers.
- Publishing Flashbots Protect and MEV-share Data by Danning Sui announces the release of historical transaction data for Flashbots Protect and MEV-Share through Flashbots Data, Flipside Crypto, and Dune Analytics.
- Frequent Batch Auction on SUAVE by Alphaist discusses the limitations of current DEX designs and explores how a frequent batch auction on SUAVE could improve trade execution, reduce centralization, and mitigate MEV.
- Composable block building - Mev-Compose by Jinsuk presents a design for composable block building on SUAVE using meta-bundles that aggregate bids from builders and searchers.
- Concurrent Block Proposers in Ethereum by Mike Neuder and Max Resnick explores the potential benefits to censorship resistance by having multiple block proposers per slot.
- ePBS design constraints by Potuz identifies a set of features essential for ePBS and explores additional design considerations.
- Payload boosts in ePBS by Potuz looks at how certain forms of ePBS can prevent reorgs in the presence of colluding proposers, attesters and builders.
- Why You Should Care About ePBS? by Terence Tsao discusses the trust dependencies between builders, relays and proposers in MEV-Boost, and analyzes the implications of enshrining PBS.
- Latency is Money: Timing Games /acc by Data Always visualize the impact of timing games on network stability and explore how MEV-Burn could incentivize more aggressive timing games.
- Censorship, Latency, and Preconfirmations in the Blob Market by Primev dives into the emerging EIP-4844 blob market and explores the potential impact it may have on block building and network latency.
- In support of simple inclusion lists by Marius van der Wijden presents concerns related to the proposed inclusion list designs and proposes an alternative design via optional inclusion lists.
- Inclusion List (EIP-7547) End to End Workflow by Terence Tsao details a version of the inclusion list where the current slot inclusion list summary is committed within a block.
- MEV-Boost Withdrawal bug by Umberto Natale details an issue with how MEV-Boost relays accounts for consensus-layer withdrawals when determining the highest bid.
- Post by Chorus One
- Distortion of MEV Auctions by Withdrawals by Data Always details how the winning bid in MEV-Boost can be inflated by consensus-layer withdrawals.
- Endgame Staking Economics: A Case for Targeting by Ansgar Dietrichs and caspar discuss the negative externalities related to Ethereum’s current issuance policy and propose an update for Electra.
- CAKE Working Group by Frontier Research introduces a working group to develop standards for message-passing between layers in the chain abstraction-stack.
- Block Builder Profitability | December 2023 - January 2024 by OreoMev analyzes the block building market and builders increased profitability in recent months.
- Launching mev.fyi, the MEV research chatbot by Valentin announces the launch of mev.fyi, an open-source research chatbot that focuses on the domain of MEV and blockchain research.
- Steps to Achieve Atomic Execution in Rollups by Tariz presents a framework for achieving atomic execution between rollups with minimal trust assumptions.
- Unveiling Intelligent DeFi: The Coprocessor Revolution by 𝔏𝔲𝔨𝔢 explore how coprocessors can improve complex DeFi computations by facilitating off-chain computation with on-chain verification.
- Missed Slot Penalties [Temperature Check] by Max Resnick proposes an increase in penalties for missed slots to reduce the negative effects of timing games.
- What is Loss-Versus-Rebalancing (LVR)? by CoW Protocol delves into the intricacies of liquidity provision in AMMs and how CoW AMM is designed to capture LVR on behalf of LP.
Posts & Threads
- Titan Builder published a post to announce that the Titan Relay is now live on mainnet.
- merkle published a thread to announce that off-chain bundles are now live on their builder.
- DODO published a thread that highlights ways to reduce MEV on DEXes through private transactions, batch auctions and dynamic slippage.
Talks & Discussions
- MEV-Boost Community Call #8 hosted by Alex Stokes invited the MEV-Boost community to discuss Deneb, optimistic relaying, removing consensus-layer withdrawals from bid values, and more.
- Notes by Terence Tsao
- Notes by Christine Kim
- Ethereum Sequencing and Preconfirmations Call #2 hosted by Justin Drake focused on potential risks and concerns of based sequencing and included presentations from Ellie Davidson, Cooper, mempirate, Ben Fisch, Ye Zhang and Alex Watts.
- Notes by Drew Van der Werff and Sam Jernigan
- Notes by Profesor Utonio
- Scraping Bits: How An Ethereum MEV Searcher Began Building Blocks As PenguinBuilder invites libevm to discuss their journey as a searcher and block builder.
- Debating Ethereum’s Identity Crisis by Christine Kim summarizes ACDE call #181 and invites Ben Edgington for a discussion on inclusion lists, censorship resistance, and rollups.
- CoW AMM Deep Dive by CoW DAO invites Andrea Canidio and Felix Leupold for a deep dive into how CoW AMM works, and how it protects LPs from LVR.
Other
- mev-boost improvement proposal #0 by Alex Stokes proposes a change to exclude withdrawals to fee recipients when relays computes a payload’s value.
Upcoming events
- March 1: Beyond the Block: MEV Along the Txn Supply Chain by Titan and HashKey Capital brings together actors along the transaction supply chain to discuss pre-confirmations, builder bidding strategies, MEV privacy, timing games, and more.
- March 1: Ethereum Validator & Node Operator Summit by EthStaker, Staking Rewards, and bloXroute Labs will host talks and panels related to staking, censorship resistance, timing games and more.
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