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
- Insecurity Through Obscurity: Veiled Vulnerabilities in Closed-Source Contracts by Sen Yang, Kaihua Qin, Aviv Yaish, and Fan Zhang introduces an EVM bytecode analysis tool designed to detect and exploit vulnerabilities in obfuscated, closed-source smart contracts such as MEV-bots.
- The Key Neutrality of Baselayer Markets by Alexander Grieve and Rodrigo Seira addresses SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce’s questions on MEV and calls for a tech-neutral, flexible approach that preserves decentralization and fosters innovation.
- Raid - Rollup inbox for based sequencing by jvranek introduces Raid (Retroactive Attestation of Inbox Data) as a set of contracts that rollups can adopt to enable preconf-compatible based sequencing.
- Timeboost is Now Live on Arbitrum — How Gattaca is Leading Adoption: Q+A by Arbitrum explains the 60-second priority windows in TimeBoost, and how Kairos will offer sub-auctions every ~100ms when it wins exclusive rights to the express lane.
- Fast Confirmation Rule on Safe Head in Prysm by Terence Tsao shares observations from testing an experimental implementation of the fast confirmation algorithm in Prysm.
- Post by Terence Tsao
- Post by Terence Tsao
Posts & Threads
- Optimism published a thread highlighting how transactions on Unichain and Base will soon become 10x faster thanks to the integration of Flashblocks.
- PBS Foundation published a thread sharing notes from Protocol Research Call 1 which discussed long-term protocol goals, network design, and validator roles.
- ladislaus.eth published a thread summarizing updates from EF Research on 3-Slot-Finality, Execution Dependencies, Delayed Execution, and more from the previous week.
- Arbitrum published a thread announcing TimeBoost being activated on Arbitrum One and Nova, allowing users to bid for express lane access with faster transaction inclusion.
- Gattaca published a thread announcing Kairos, an express lane auction system built on top of TimeBoost with sub-round auctions every ~100ms.
- Alex Nezlobin published a thread showcasing how 0x Settler failed to enforce slippage limits on individual hops in multi-hop swaps, enabling JIT and sandwich attacks in low-liquidity, low-fee pools.
- The Latest in Defi Research published a thread highlighting an upcoming paper that explores how often Ethereum trades could have been executed peer‑to‑peer through CoW-matches.
Talks & Discussions
- Indexed Podcast: Pectra Upgrade: Will This Save Ethereum? with hildobby and @sui414 invites Christine Kim to provide an overview of the EIPs included in the upcoming Pectra upgrade.
- Bankless: Ethereum’s Strategic Pivot: The Plan it Needs to Win invites Dankrad Feist and Ansgar Dietrichs to discuss the focus towards L1 growth and the implications for L2s and decentralization.
- The Rollup: Why You Need To Understand Timeboost (and how it affects Ethereum users!) invites Harry Kalodner for a conversation on TimeBoost and the future of Arbitrum.
- Post by The Rollup
- L2 Interop Working Group Call #7 hosted by Josh Rudolf discuss ERC-7786 as a modular API standard for cross-chain message passing and composable interoperability.
- Notes by Josh Rudolf
- Thread by Ellie Davidson
- beam call #4 (exit queue) hosted by Justin Drake invites Mike Neuder and Mallesh Pai to present Adding flexibility to Ethereum’s exit queue via EIP-7922.
- Ethereum 3 slot finality invites Luca Zanolini and Roberto Saltini for a presentation on the design of Gasper, and 3-Slot-Finality.
- Resource Locks 101 ft. Ankit and Stephane (OneBalance) invites Ankit Chiplunkar and Stephane Gosselin to discuss resource locks, solvers, interopability, and OneBalance.
- EIP-7917: Deterministic proposer lookahead with Justin Drake & Lin Oshitani PEEPanEIP invites Justin Drake and Lin Oshitani to present EIP-7917, which adds a
proposer_lookahead-field to the beacon state for storing a deterministic proposer lookahead for the next epoch. - MEV Space #5: Sandwiched in Time – Tracing MEV on EVM Chains by invites Luis Bezzenberger, Yixin Cao, and hildobby to discuss the evolution of sandwich attacks, and mitigation efforts through protocol upgrades and encrypted mempools.
Other
- Announcing multi-client support for rbuilder by @mralj announces the support for different EL clients to rbuilder, enabling client diversity in BuilderNet.
- Delayed Execution: EIP-7886 - Info Doc by Toni Wahrstätter provides additional information on EIP-7886, designed to make blocks statically verifiable by charging coinbase for inclusion costs upfront.
- EIP-7702 Security Risks Developers Shouldn’t Ignore by Nethermind Security explains the design of EIP-7702 and the associated vulnerabilities from insecure delegation mechanisms.
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