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
- Reasons to have higher L1 gas limits even in an L2-heavy Ethereum by Vitalik Buterin describes how even in a rollup-centric ecosystem, scaling of L1 gas limit provides long-term benefits for censorship resistance, L2 interoperability, asset transfers, and security.
- Slot a la carte: Centralization Issues in Ethereum’s Proof-of-Stake Protocol by János Tapolcai, Bence Ladóczki, and Ábel Nagy analyzes vulnerabilities in Ethereum’s RANDAO implementation and demonstrates how colluding stakers can influence leader selection.
- Perpetual Demand Lending Pools by Tarun Chitra, Theo Diamandis, Nathan Sheng, Luke Sterle, and Kamil Yusubov formalize a model of Perpetual Demand Lending Pools (PDLPs) as a novel liquidity mechanism for decentralized perpetual futures exchanges.
- [draft] Why The World Needs Flashbots (and Crypto): A Researcher’s Take by @Quintus explores the potential impact of AI on ad auctions, the risks of monopolistic control, and how blockchain and cryptographic privacy can create more equitable market structures.
- Evolution of AI Systems: From Web2 to Web3 by @tesa details the transition of AI agents from centralized Web2 architectures to decentralized Web3 frameworks.
- Init Systems in Confidential VMs: An Ongoing Investigation by @fnerdman outlines the challenges of selecting an init system for confidential VMs running in TEEs.
- Becoming Based: A Path towards Decentralised Sequencing by Lorenzo and Kubi Mensah presents a roadmap for rollups with centralized sequencers to transition into being based by delegating their sequencing to gateways.
- Thread by Gattaca
- Post by Kubi Mensah
- Thread by Gattaca
- Beyond Based: Sequencing, Governance, and the Future of Ethereum Rollups by Tom Lehman surveys the sequencing, governance, and funding structures of rollups.
- Post by Tom Lehman
- How to get bots to stabilize your protocol by PropellerHeads explores the interaction between DeFi protocols and automated trading entities, identifying the conditions under which searchers, solvers, and market makers contribute to protocol stability.
- The Rise of Opinionated Blockchains by Elijah argues that opinionated blockchains balance the benefits of appchains and generalized platforms by allowing developers to define block validity conditions.
- Road to Real-time: Preconfirmation Shreds by Thanh Nguyen presents a design to achieve faster transaction preconfirmations through incremental block construction.
- Thread by Thanh Nguyen
- Post by Sam Battenally
- Exploring AMMs by InfectedCrypto describes the fundamentals of AMMs including liquidity provisioning, cost structures, and security considerations.
- L3 Based Stack - Unlocking Appchain Synchronous Composability by Spire Labs outlines how their Based Stack enables apps to launch their own based L2s and L3s with shared settlement and coordinated sequencing.
- Thread by Spire Labs
- 7 Things You Need to Know About Unichain, Uniswap’s Latest L2 by Krzysztof Gogol describes how Unichain is designed to provide faster transactions, lower fees, and MEV internalization.
- Optimizing Ethereum Gas Efficiency With Multidimensional EIP-1559 by Seongwan Park explores the concept of multidimensional gas pricing as a way to improve resource allocation and scalability.
- Preconfirmation for Average Joe II by Ceciliaz_ discusses preconfirmations and their implications for validators.
- : : [Issue] Rollup Economics & MEV: The Smartest Wins (Feat. Radius) by Ingeun Kim describes the current state of MEV on L2s, and how Radius enables rollups to capture MEV while protecting users.
Posts & Threads
- Barnabé Monnot published a thread sharing recent publications and collaborations from EF Research.
- Ben Fisch published a post exploring the challenges of achieving fast confirmations in based rollups with synchronous L1 composability.
- Max Resnick published a thread arguing that shorter block times reduce both arbitrage and sandwich attacks by reducing transaction failures, which in turn leads to tighter slippage.
- Potuz published a thread detailing a 2-client devnet with Teku and Prysm finalizing an ePBS epoch.
- Chris Burniske published a thread outlining how different sequencer designs impact value distribution, and how Application-Specific Sequencing could help sustain applications without relying on token incentives.
- Toni Wahrstätter published a post highlighting longer inclusion times for transactions involving Tornado Cash.
Talks & Discussions
- EthereumZurich hosted by UZH Blockchain Center:
- Cross-chain Arbitrages in the Realm of Blockchain Interoperability by @boz1
- Insights into TEE Research and Deployment Framework for Blockchain Scalability by @rezabfil .
- Solving MEV via App Specific Sequencing by Daniel Contreras Salinas.
- Atomic Execution is Not Enough for Arbitrage Profit Extraction in Shared Sequencers by Maria Silva.
- MEV From the Dark Forest to institutional adoption by Samuele Rodi.
- The Rollup Revolution jan by Jan Gorzny.
- Ethereum Macroeconomics via Dynamics by Daniele Palombi.
- Tackling 2 Billion Dollar Problem In Production: OEV Design That Works And Scales by Marcin Kazmierczak.
- Metadata privacy at the transport layer in Builder APIs of Proposer Builder Separation by Qianchen Yu.
- Deanonymizing Ethereum Validators The P2P Network Has a Privacy Issue by Yann Vonlanthen.
- The proposed change in ETH staking yields and its impact on different staker types by Matthias Hafner and Nicolas Oderbolz.
- Agentic Ethereum 2025 Summit hosted by ETHGlobal:
- Panel: Infra For Agentic Apps with @dmarz, Shaw, Davide Crapis, dcbuilder, @socrates1024, Jasper, Karl Floersch and Chunk.
- Panel: Putting the A Back in DAOs with Vitalik Buterin, Shaw, Kevin Owocki, Linda Xie, Kenneth Ng and @tina.
- The Promise & Challenge of Crypto + AI Applications by Vitalik Buterin.
- ChaosChain and Agentic Governance With Nethermind by Tomasz Stańczak.
- Day one on Unichain with Chase Chapman, niko, Hayden Adams, Karl Floersch, Devin Walsh, Kenneth Ng, @dmarz, and Mark Toda discuss the launch of Unichain and how it’s designed to enhance the scalability and efficiency of DeFi.
- Indexed Podcast: Should L2s Pay Tarrifs to Ethereum? hosted by hildobby, Boxer, and @sui414 invites Lorenz Lehmann for a conversation on fee structures, rollup profitability, block space utilization, and growthepie.
- Post by Indexed Podcast
- Post by @sui414
- Deeply Intents: Meditations on Solving invites Markus Schmitt to unpack solvers, market making, role specialization, and AMMs.
- PEEPanEIP: EIP-7805: Fork-choice enforced Inclusion Lists (FOCIL) invites Thomas Thiery and Julian Ma to present how FOCIL could help improve the credible neutrality, privacy, and scaling of Ethereum, and outlines the latest implementation progress.
- FOCIL Breakout #4 hosted by Thomas Thiery discussed zkFOCIL, FOCIL meets Delayed Execution, and FOCIL with Delayed Execution under EPBS.
- Agenda by Thomas Thiery
- Notes by Jihoon Song
- L2 Interop Working Group Call #3 hosted by Josh Rudolf covered the latest developments in cross-chain message passing, Open Intents Framework, and more.
- Notes by Josh Rudolf
- Beam Call #1 hosted by Justin Drake discuss progress on the Beam Chain initiative with representatives from 12 Beam client teams, and 6 CL client teams.
- Post by Justin Drake
- The Rollup: Ethereum’s Native Rollup Roadmap invites Justin Drake and Federico Carrone to give an overview of based rollups, native rollups, and interoperability.
- Post by The Rollup
- Bell Curve: The Evolution of Crypto Exchanges invites Austin Adams and Jesse Walden for a conversation on the current state of the DEX landscape, Uniswap v4, and Doppler.
- Post by Bell Curve
- Post by Austin Adams
- Bell Curve x Expansion: Unichain, Succinct’s Prover Network, and Crypto’s Trust Crisis invites Nick White, Jill Gunter, and Uma Roy to discuss the launch of Unichain, and outlines Succinct’s Prover Network.
- Post by Bell Curve
- Kiln’s Restaking Rendez-Vous - Ep #20 invites Murat Akdeniz to discuss MEV, preconfirmations, block building, and mev-commit.
Other
- MEV-Boost community call #12 hosted by Alex Stokes scheduled for Feb 19, invites the MEV-Boost community to discuss Pectra readiness, bid pricing, header timestamps, and more.
- Post by Alex Stokes
- Based OP Docs by Gattaca and LambdaClass is a reference implementation of a Phase 1 based OP Stack.
- Thread by Gattaca
- Post by Kubi Mensah
- Prague-Electra (Pectra) by ethereum.org provides an overview of each EIP included in Pectra.
- Post by ethereum.org
- Reth v1.2.0 by Paradigm includes optimizations, performance gains, and Pectra timestamps for Holešky and Sepolia.
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