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
- A local-node-favoring delta to the scaling roadmap by Vitalik Buterin discuss adjustments to the current L1 scaling roadmap to increase throughput while preserving the viability of self-hosted full nodes.
- Signal-Boost: L1 Interop Plugin for Rollups by Fabric introduces a mechanism to enable synchronous composability between Ethereum L1 and existing rollups with same-slot message passing.
- Native Rollups: Where they are, and where they are going by Conor McMenamin and Luca Donno presents a technical overview of native rollups and outlines open challenges that remain to be solved.
- Post by L2BEAT
- Post by Nethermind
- Block processing performance on Ethereum mainnet by Améziane Hamlat presents benchmark data on block execution performance across different EL clients.
- Adventures in ERC4337 frontrunning by Ananth Vivekanand recounts their journey of building a frontrunning bot targeting mispriced ERC-4337-gas refunds on Polygon.
- SPIRAL: A BFT-Based Trust Layer for L2 Interoperability by malik details an architecture for synchronous L1-L2 composability, and outlines how it’s different from Signal-Boost.
- Proof in Silicon: How Hardware Is Reinventing Trust in Crypto by EigenPhi summarizes a conversation between @shea and Chua Zheng Leong on how TEEs are transforming block building, privacy models, and protocol design.
- The Hunt Expands: New Species, New Tactics Emerging in the Biodiversity Age by EigenPhi describes the strategies and evolution of advanced sandwich bots like jaredfromsubway.eth.
- The Jungle Never Sleeps—2025 Reality Check in the Speed-Wars Era by EigenPhi examines the persistence of sandwich attacks and their current state on Ethereum.
- MEV Myth #1: Why Your Passive Limit Orders Are Actually Active Targets by EigenPhi details how a searcher arbitraged a price gap between two stale limit orders, using only the user’s own liquidity.
- MEV Myth #2: Adding Liquidity Is Safe From Sandwich Bots by EigenPhi details how a user lost $851K by adding liquidity to a Uniswap v2 pool without slippage protection, enabling a sandwich bot to sandwich the transaction.
Posts & Threads
- @shea published a post highlighting that over $9B in Aave TVL is now secured by Flashbots-enabled SVR price feeds.
- @shea published a post summarizing BuilderNet upgrades from the past months that greatly improved speed and efficiency.
- Sam Battenally published a thread detailing benchmarks of Flashblocks on Base Sepolia using EVM TX Latency Test.
- Ladislaus.eth published a thread sharing publications and collaborations by EF Research from the previous week.
- Potuz published a post sharing an update on testing a proof of concept implementation in Prysm of RLNC block propagation with large blocks.
Talks & Discussions
- Protocol Research Call 2 hosted by Ansgar Dietrichs invites researchers to discuss approaches focused on the near-term scaling of execution throughput.
- Agenda by Barnabé Monnot and Ansgar Dietrichs
- Thread by Ansgar Dietrichs
- Thread by Barnabé Monnot
- Notes by Laszlo
- FOCIL breakout #11 hosted by Thomas Thiery invites Michael Moser to present the goals and architecture of Relay Inclusion Lists.
- Agenda by Thomas Thiery
- Post by Michael Moser
- beam call #6 (3SF: 3-slot finality) hosted by Justin Drake invites researchers to present and discuss updates related to 3-Slot-Finality.
Other
- BuilderNet v1.4 by Flashbots details the latest release of BuilderNet with Pectra readiness, persistent TLS certificates, and more.
- We’re making Base 10x faster with Flashblocks by Base details how apps, wallets, and indexers can integrate Flashblocks, improving confirmation times by 10x by streaming sub-blocks every 200ms.
- Announcing the Trillion Dollar Security Initiative by Ethereum Foundation announces an ecosystem-wide effort to enhance Ethereum’s security to support civilization-scale infrastructure that securely underpins the internet and global economy.
- Crypto Wallets 2025 Data-Driven Insights & Trends by Dune explores the wallet landscape and highlights trends in adoption, user behaviour, account abstraction, and more.
- Pectra Pages by trent.eth and nixo.eth is a compilation of perspectives from client developers, researchers, and coordinators from 18 different teams, looking back on the Pectra upgrade process, and what’s next.
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