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
- Forking the RANDAO: Manipulating Ethereum’s Distributed Randomness Beacon by Ábel Nagy, János Tapolcai, István András Seres, and Bence Ladóczki analyzes the manipulability of Ethereum’s RANDAO implementation, and introduces a strategy to selectively fork out an honest proposer’s block to maximize MEV.
Posts & Threads
- Potuz published a thread analyzing whether builders exclude blob transactions during periods of high congestion, finding no deviation from expected behavior.
- Alex Nezlobin published a post detailing cumulative LP markouts in the ETH/USDC Uniswap-pool on Base, and the potential for JIT liquidity sandwiching.
- Middleway.eth published a thread exploring how Curve Finance uses Cow Swap’s Programmatic Order Framework to mitigate MEV and provide efficient execution.
- IC3 published a thread summarizing the 2025 IC3 Winter Retreat with talks and discussions on voting mechanisms for DAOs, Web2 account encumbrance through TEEs, and more.
Talks & Discussions
- Additional recordings from CBER Crafting the Cryptoeconomy Conference hosted by Columbia University’s Center for Digital Finance and Technologies have been uploaded:
- Optimistic Rollups by Ed Felten details various sequencer designs and their tradeoffs.
- MEV Mitigation by a Transaction Ordering Rule by Robert McLaughlin presents a transaction ordering rule designed to reduce price volatility and prevent sandwich attacks.
- Price Formation in Memory Pools by Fayçal Driss explores the impact block times and mempools have on DEX price discovery.
- Columbia University Digital Finance Seminar Series hosted by The Center for Digital Finance and Technologies and The Briger Family Digital Finance Lab:
- All AMMS are CFMMs by Roger Lee discuss DEX design and approaches to reduce MEV and LVR.
- FOCIL Meeting #2 hosted by Thomas Thiery invited client teams to discuss implementation progress and ongoing work related to FOCIL.
- Ethereum Sequencing and Preconfirmations Call #16 hosted by Justin Drake highlights recent developments related to based rollups, and invites Tom Lehman for a presentation on Facet.
- Spicy Takes with DevenMat, mrs kzg.eth, and Ed discusses Arrakis’s HOT AMM, composability, order flow, and more.
Other
- TEE Bible - Your First Stop for TEE in Crypto by TEE Intern, Alex GG, and msfew is a collection of papers, articles, and other resources related to the use of TEEs in crypto.
- Thread by TEE Intern
- stealth-gas-cli by mrs kzg.eth is a lightweight privacy tool for anonymizing gas payments through a blind signature scheme, live on Holešky.
- Barnabé Monnot published a thread detailing EF Research’s team structure, initiatives, goals, and leadership changes with Barnabé Monnot and Alex Stokes stepping into the position of EF Research co-leads.
- Builders, or Market Makers 2.0? The Rise of Crypto’s Hidden Giants by EigenPhi highlights a collection of their posts from last year analyzing the builder market.
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