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
- Pricing Execution Rights when Rewards are Mean Reverting by @Christoph argues that block rewards are mean reverting and derive the fair value of future proposal rights and of execution tickets assuming mean reversion.
- It’s time to talk about L2 MEV by @sui414 examines the state of L2s after the Dencun upgrade, focusing on activity, transaction fees, and MEV.
- Adjusting the bidding strategy in the Flashbots block builder by @shea presents a new bidding strategy in the Flashbots builder that dynamically adjusts the bid in response to other bids in the MEV-Boost auction.
- Disclosure: Underflow bug in Mev-Boost relay by @shea details an incident on June 10 where an underflow bug caused the ultra sound relay to accept an impossibly high bid.
- Illuminating the blob market by @shea discusses the unexpected inclusion order of blobs during surging activity on L2s, emphasizing the need for better visibility and strategies.
- Blob Inversion: An Investigation Into the June 20th 2024 Blob Spike by Blair Marshall details the surge in blob base fee on June 20 which exceeded the cost of calldata, leading to significant overpayments by L2s.
- Constitutional AIP: Proposal to adopt Timeboost, a new transaction ordering policy by Arbitrum Foundation proposes adopting Timeboost for Arbitrum chains to improve transaction inclusion and capture MEV.
- FAQ by Arbitrum Foundation
- Thread by Ed Felten
- Thread by Entropy Advisors
- Post by Terence Tsao
- Post by Alex Nezlobin
- Orbit SSF: solo-staking-friendly validator set management for SSF by Francesco examines different approaches to validator capping while maintaining solo staking viability.
- Epochs and slots all the way down: ways to give Ethereum users faster transaction confirmation times by Vitalik Buterin discusses ways to improve transaction confirmation times, including SSF and preconfirmations.
- Estimating Validator Decentralization Using p2p Data by Jonas and Naman Garg presents research done under ROP-8 to analyze the geographical distribution of Ethereum validators.
- Crypto Crossroads: Reflections from an IC3 Summer Camp Rookie by @PradyumnaShome describes their experiences from participating in the IC3 summer camp, and thoughts on topics such as TEEs and MEV.
- Fork Choice Attacks and Protections in EPBS by Terence Tsao explores fork choice attacks through the perspective of ePBS, focusing on the new fork choice boost parameters and the rationale behind their design.
- Pricing Gas Fee Derivatives by Finn Casey Fierro outlines a methodology for understanding and pricing gas derivatives.
- ETH Supply Chain Future by Jon Charbonneau discusses various proposals related to APS, ET, EA, IL, MEV burn, and multi-block MEV.
- Inclusion Lists Don’t Fix Multi-Block MEV in APS by Charlie Noyes discusses the potential issues of multi-block MEV in APS, and why ILs are ineffective in solving these problems.
- ETH Staking Security: How Risk-Adjusted Rewards Mitigate Forked Software Threats by Figment explores risk-adjusted rewards for validators, timing games, and the risks associated with running forks of MEV-Boost.
- From Censorship to Centralization: 4 Dimensions of Ethereum Relay’s Public Goods Problem by EigenPhi explores the MEV-Boost relay landscape and the risk of centralization and censorship.
- The Hidden Goldmine on L2s by Austin Marrazza gives an overview of how L2s can capture revenue via arbitrage auctions.
Posts & Threads
- Barnabé Monnot published a thread emphasizing that the benefit of execution auctions over execution tickets is not about preconfirmations, and that APS is not just for based rollups and preconfirmations.
- Barnabé Monnot published a thread to discuss how rainbow staking fits in a larger roadmap for staking, and its benefits and trade-offs.
- Terence Tsao published a series of posts related to timing games, ePBS and preconfirmations, multi-block MEV, and block actions vs slot auctions.
- Alex Nezlobin published a post expressing concerns related to markets for future blockspace and their implications on multi-block MEV and censorship.
- Reply by Thomas Thiery
- Reply by Potuz
- Miha Lotric published a thread to present the bottom-of-the-block backrunning SUAPP built during the Crucible hackathon.
- Kevin published a thread that compares SGX to TDX, and provides an overview of SEAM and VMX.
- Jonah Burian published a post on the interplay between ILs and multi-block MEV.
- Potuz published a thread sharing their thoughts on based rollups, preconfirmations, and where to go from here.
- Michael published a post on delegated gateway designs, and why they will fail to prevent centralization due to multi-block MEV and switching costs.
- Jon Charbonneau published a thread to express concerns related to the development of centralized infrastructure for preconfirmations and based sequencing.
- Michael Ippolito published a thread on the topic of PBS, preconfirmations and Ethereum’s roadmap.
- Dan Robinson published a thread to summarize proposed mechanisms for improved censorship resistance.
- Charlie Noyes published a thread that questions why rollups would choose to become based.
- Reply by Davide Crapis
- Reply by MilliΞ
- Charlie Noyes published a thread to express their thoughts related to making L1 more attractive for apps, maximizing DA, and stabilizing MEV.
Talks & Discussions
- Flashwares: What do MEV apps want from TEEs anyway? by @mateusz and @dmarz explores the process of designing and building SUAPPs.
- Forum post by @mateusz
- Thread by @dmarz
- SUAPP Development: Setting Up a SUAPP by @brock builds a SUAPP from scratch, and showcases everything you need to know in order to start building your own.
- Bell Curve: Ethereum’s Path Forward: Aligning Security and Monetary Policy invites @Hasu and Justin Drake to discuss restaking, preconfirmations, MVI, and more.
- MEV-Boost community call #9 hosted by Alex Stokes brought together the MEV-Boost community to discuss Commit-Boost, the recent relay underflow bug, the blob market, and more.
- ePBS breakout room #2 hosted by Potuz discussed concerns related to the timing of block processing, fork choice specification, PTC rewards, and more.
- Agenda by Potuz
- Notes by Terence Tsao
- ePBS breakout room #3 hosted by Potuz reviewed the latest progress on the consensus specification, and the effort of rebasing to the latest Electra release.
- Agenda by Potuz
- Notes by Terence Tsao
- Indexed Podcast: Should we Keep Event Logs on Ethereum?? with Boxer, Danning Sui and hildobby invites Alvin Hsia and Mark Tyneway for a conversation on event logs and their impact on growth and scaling.
- Into the Bytecode: OneBalance, credible accounts and credible commitments invites Stephane Gosselin to discuss credible commitment machines, the CAKE framework and the Credible stack.
Other
- Request for SuApp: Kettle Cash by @socrates1024 describes the potential for TEEs to provide One-Shot Signatures.
- Destructive Hardware Trojan Detection Protocol Brainstorming by @Quintus explores a decentralized quality assurance protocol to defend against TEEs that are maliciously built to deviate from specification.
- Releasing Reth 1.0! by Georgios Konstantopoulos announces the release of Reth 1.0 as a production-ready EL-client written in Rust.
- Execution layer cross-validation by Péter Szilágyi emphasizes the need for client diversity and proposes a method to verify blocks using multiple clients.
- issuance.wtf by caspar is a collection of resources related to Ethereum issuance.
Upcoming events
- July 7: Anti MEV MEV Day by Unaligned Hauz and SemanticLayer
- July 7: Sequencing x CAKE day by Espresso and Frontier Research
- July 8-11: EthCC by Ethereum France
- July 8: Searcher.wtf by aori, Flood, Chainbound, PropellerHeads, bloXroute Labs and Barter
- July 9: L2con by Epic Web3
- July 9: Kiln Rendez-Vous EthCC 2024 by Kiln
- July 10: FHE Summit by FHE Onchain
- July 10: The entrenched: dApps and their MEV by Sorella Labs and Fenbushi Capital
- July 11: State of Onchain Liquidity by Flashbots, Uniswap Foundation and PropellerHeads
- July 11: Unaligned Day by FastLane Labs
- Thread by Alex Watts
- Thread by Alex Watts
- July 11-13: Modular Summit 3.0 by Celestia Labs and Maven11
- Aug 6: The MEV Workshop at the Science of Blockchain Conference 2024 (MEV SBC ’24) by Flashbots
- Aug 7-9: The Science of Blockchain Conference 2024 (SBC’24) by IC3, Stanford Center for Blockchain Research and UC Berkeley RDI.
- Aug 16-17: Frontiers by Paradigm
Sign up here if you’d like to get The MEV Letter straight to your inbox!
