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
- TTEE - Update on technical work by @Quintus provides an update on Project Trustless TEE by outlining the problem space and ongoing efforts.
- Native rollups—superpowers from L1 execution by Justin Drake suggests a pathway for EVM-equivalent rollups to inherit full Ethereum L1 security, and eliminate the need for security councils.
- Block-level fee markets: Four easy pieces by Barnabé Monnot discusses alternative approaches for metering and pricing blockchain resources to improve scalability and cost efficiency.
- Embedded Rollups, Part 1: Introduction by Lin Oshitani and Conor McMenamin explores embedded rollups and demonstrates a key-value store example, which can be applied to services like ENS and Keystore.
- Post by Conor McMenamin
- Post by Lin Oshitani
- Embedded Rollups, Part 2: Shared Bridging by Lin Oshitani and Conor McMenamin introduces an embedded shared-bridge rollup to enable fast and efficient cross-chain interoperability.
- Block-Level Warming by Toni Wahrstätter proposes block-level address and keeping accessed slots warm throughout a block’s execution to optimize gas costs and improve efficiency.
- Joint Report on recent developments in crypto-assets by ESMA provides an analytical assessment on DeFi, MEV, market trends, and regulatory challenges under MiCA.
- Ethereum Macroeconomics via Dynamics ½ by Eric Downes analyzes Ethereum’s macroeconomics and how staking, inflation, and validator behavior influence network stability and governance over time.
- MEATBAL: Mitigating Extractive Actions via Trusted Blockchain Accountability Layer, or How to stop 95% of DeFi Hacks at Scale by Sam Bacha propose the implementation of two new Ethereum JSON-RPC methods for MEV Relays to mitigate risks associated with malicious activities.
- Post-Election Thoughts Arbitrage Trading in Prediction Markets by Taker examines pricing discrepancies across prediction markets and arbitrage strategies from the US presidential election.
- History of Application Design by @tesa traces the evolution of application design from command-line interfaces, to mobile, web3, and AI agents.
- Unpacking The Next Generation Of Ethereum L2s (I): Based Rollups by Pavel Paramonov explores the architecture, benefits, and trade-offs of based rollups.
- To Pump The Gas Or Not: Analyzing The Ethereum Gas Limit Debate by Seongwan Park analyzes the implications of a gas limit increase on network decentralization and stability.
- How Espresso Network is an interoperability “superchain” for all Ethereum L2s by Ben Fisch details how Espresso Network is designed to enable fast and trust-minimized interoperability for L2s.
- Delegation in Bolt: Outsourcing Sophistication While Preserving Decentralization by Moncesco and mempirate explores levels of delegation in bolt, analyzing their implications for centralization, censorship-resistance, and fault attribution.
Posts & Threads
- @SHL0MS published a post introducing hell.tech, a memetic experiment leveraging Teleport to allow users to make deals with @s8n and give it secure account access to enact consequences if the terms are broken.
- Deal with @s8n (How?) by @sxysun outlines further details related to the social experiment where users negotiated deals with @s8n by staking their digital identity as collateral.
- Uma Roy published a thread outlining how native rollups are designed to inherit the security of Ethereum L1, maintain EVM compatibility, and scale using ZKPs.
- Ari Kiry published a thread describing Chainlink’s efforts to redistribute MEV with Smart Value Recapture and Protected Order Flow framework.
- Taiko Gwyneth published a thread outlining how preconfirmations are designed to provide instant transaction assurances on rollups.
- Markus published a thread describing why execution preconfirmations are ineffective in CEX-DEX arbitrage, due to information leakage.
- EigenPhi published a thread detailing how a user got sandwiched and lost $796K when adding liquidity to a Uniswap v2 pool, and provides information on how to mitigate these risk.
- Spire published a thread explaining how builders are selected in Spire’s Based Stack.
Talks & Discussions
- Recordings from Columbia CryptoEconomics Working Session 2024 hosted by Briger Family Digital Finance Lab, School of Engineering and Applied Science at Columbia University and Ethereum Foundation have been uploaded:
- MEV Capture by Fahad Saleh
- Resonance by Naveen Durvasula
- L2 Interop by Noah Pravecek
- Prover marketplace economics by Jacob Everly and Tim Carstens
- Future of staking by Caspar Schwarz-Schilling, Ansgar Dietrichs, Francesco D’Amato and Barnabé Monnot
- An APS research program by Julian Ma
- Picking the EL fruits by Dankrad Feist and Ansgar Dietrichs
- Unifying Ethereum’s Priority Markets by @Quintus
- Snarkify everything! by Justin Drake
- Future of staking breakout by Ansgar Dietrichs, Barnabé Monnot, Caspar Schwarz-Schilling and Francesco D’Amato
- Future of interoperability by Ellie Davidson
- Closing Remarks by Tim Roughgarden, Julian Ma, Dankrad Feist, Ansgar Dietrichs, @Quintus , Justin Drake, Barnabé Monnot and Ellie Davidson
- Post by Tim Roughgarden
- Indexed Podcast: Solana MEV w/ Ghost invites chris to explore the intricacies of how MEV varies on Ethereum and Solana.
- Post by Indexed Podcast
- Post by @sui414
- L2 Interop Working Group #1 hosted by Josh Rudolf brought together representatives from the L2s ecosystem to discuss standards for chain-specific addresses and cross-chain messaging.
- Notes by Josh Rudolf
- EVM Resource Pricing Breakout #1 hosted by Davide Crapis invited core devs and researchers to discuss updates to gas pricing, opcode costs, block-level warming, and more.
- Notes by Kev Wedderburn
- Post by Davide Crapis
Other
- TEE Kettle by Poetic Technologies is a community run forum for in-depth discussions on TEEs, including both secure hardware and software perspectives.
- Pectra.wtf by Sébastien Rannou is a collection of resources related to Pectra, with interactive charts for penalties and slashing.
- DeFi’s Hidden Choreography: From Protocol Ballet to Financial Chess by EigenPhi summarizes their publications from last year related to searching, solving, and exploits.
- Ethereum’s Perfect Storm: How Centralization Threatens DeFi’s Future by EigenPhi highlights a collection of their posts from last year analyzing the builder market.
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