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
- Notes on the LVR of FM-AMM by Ko Sunghun show how FM-AMMs, such as CoW-AMM, outperform CPMM, such as Uniswap V2, if transaction costs are low.
- A Sandwich-Resistant AMM by Jarry Xiao, Frankie, 0xShitTrader, and Dan Robinson outlines the construction of an AMM that makes atomic sandwich attacks unprofitable by preventing swaps from being filled at a price better than the initial slot window price.
- Post by Umbra Research
- Thread by defi guy
- A design for APS-burn in the context of a Decentralized L2 by Simon Brown presents an APS design for decentralized L2 with a sealed-bid auction to mitigate censorship and multi-block MEV.
- TEEs on dYdX Chain - Research Report by Max Holloway explores the potential of using TEEs for transaction privacy and reducing MEV on the dYdX chain.
- Rollup-Centric Considerations of Based Preconfimations (Part 1) by CeciliaZ030 introduces Gwyneth as a prospective rollup design with based preconfirmations and synchronous composability.
- Forum post by CeciliaZ030
- Thread by Taiko
- ‘HEH’: To the Reader who cares about Ethereum by juggernaut examines the rise of Banana Gun, and their exclusive order flow arrangement with Titan Builder.
- Titan Relay Incident Report: Withdrawals Root Validation Issue by Titan Relay details an issue that allowed invalid headers to pass Titan Relay between June 17 and July 25, impacting an upper bound of 570 blocks.
- In Search of OEV by Delphi Digital explores the state of OEV on lending protocols and details the various OEV solutions by API3, UMA, and Pyth Network.
- The case for decentralization increasing efficiency is overstated by Nicholas Decker discusses centralization in the builder market and the trade-offs between efficiency and decentralization.
- ePBS Metagame: SSP peacekeeping and alternative public service by Maxwell Koegler explores how ePBS and MEV-Burn might impact the builder market and proposer behavior.
Posts & Threads
- Péter Szilágyi published a thread to express concerns related to PeerDAS and the resulting increase in network load.
- Akaki Mamageishvili published a thread summarizing their recent paper together with Minghao Pan and Christoph Schlegel on sybil-proof mechanisms.
- Conor McMenamin published a thread on the economic viability of preconfirmations and private orderflow.
- 0xprincess published a thread discussing the decline of on-chain DeFi due to the rise of intents, solvers, and CeDeFi protocols.
- Ethan Buchman published a thread based on their talk at Modular Summit 3.0 on the topic of privacy using TEE, ZKP, MPC, and FHE.
- Ethan Buchman published a thread highlighting the benefits and challenges of TEE and how ZKPs, produced in the enclave, can mitigate side-channel attacks.
- Pradyumna Shome published a thread to discuss The Flawed Design of Intel TDX by Julian Stecklina.
- Nick Cannon published a post describing various ways TEEs can make software more secure and trustless, based on the talk by @socrates1024 at Modular Summit 3.0
- Lyron Co Ting Keh published a post arguing that TEEs are worth revisiting due to the developments made in the last five years.
- Robert Miller published a thread arguing that the need for PBS would remain even with multiple concurrent proposers.
- Doug Colkitt published a post highlighting the need for a spam-resistant deterministic merging algorithm to mitigate spam in a design with multiple concurrent proposers.
- Toni Wahrstätter published a post to highlight block propagation latency in Europe, US, and Australia.
- Primev published a thread to announce their new Validator Dashboard for mev-commit.
Talks & Discussions
- Usable ZK with Mads, episode 3 invites @socrates1024 for a discussion on the misconceptions of TEEs and how to use them together with ZKP, MPC, and FHE.
- The future of block proposal at Kiln Rendez-Vous EthCC 2024 with Justin Drake, Terence Tsao, Alex, Drew Van der Werff, and Sébastien Rannou explore the current state of PBS and how the space might evolve from here.
- Impact of Self Built Blocks by Matt Cutler at Unaligned Day details how locally built blocks increase base fee volatility.
- The Infinite Jungle: The Surprising Truth About Self-Built Blocks invites Matt Cutler to discuss how increased base fee volatility from locally built blocks impacts users.
- Web3 Galaxy Brain: Credible Accounts invites Stephane Gosselin for a discussion on the transaction supply chain, chain abstraction, credible auctions, and OneBalance
- Post by nnnnicholas
- Transfer NFT/Tokens from Hacked Wallet with Flashbots | Rescue from Compromised Wallet by Uttam Singh provides a step-by-step walkthrough of how to transfer remaining tokens from a compromised wallet using ethers-provider-flashbots-bundle.
- Post by Uttam Singh
Other
- Builder Playground by @ferranbt and @metachris is a tool to deploy an end-to-end environment to locally test an Ethereum L1 builder.
- Post by @ferranbt
- Post by @metachris
- Dark.Pool Researchathon: Privacy Tech for Building a Dark Pool in DeFi by @rezabfil and @Lilyjjo shares a readout from DarkPool.Design on the tradeoffs between using TEE, ZKP, FHE, and MPC for dark pools.
- Evm.monster by St1ng3R helps debug EVM transactions and find smart contract vulnerabilities by analyzing the bytecode execution flow.
- Mevboost-data by ZT visualizes how block rewards and MEV are on average lower in the first slots of an epoch.
Upcoming events
- Aug 5: Astria Research Day by Astria
- Aug 6: The MEV Workshop at the Science of Blockchain Conference 2024 (MEV SBC ’24) by Flashbots
- Post by @sarah.allen
- 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
- Aug 20-27: MEV TOKYO by Titania Research
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