MEV-Boost is interesting because it doesn’t quite fit into any of the buckets that we’re used to thinking about:
- It’s not part of “the Ethereum protocol”, so it doesn’t fit well under AllCoreDevs. AllCoreDevs historically is very cautious about expanding its role, and has focused almost exclusively on consensus-layer changes. Hence, MEV-Boost needs some separate structure.
- It is a protocol, not a centralized application. MEV-Boost gets contributions from many organizations. Flashbots has no way to shut down MEV-Boost. It’s logically decentralized, though there are benefits to most of the ecosystem using the same protocol. Hence, it doesn’t fit well to just have Flashbots-the-company run it.
- It’s not like a regular ERC (eg. ERC-20), because it’s not “finished”. There are many ongoing changes being considered to MEV-Boost, including really important ones like inclusion lists to protect against builder censorship. Hence, “sit back and do nothing” isn’t a solution.
- It’s already systemically important, and greatly affects people’s economic interests (unlike eg. ERC-4337). Hence, it can’t progress effectively with small informal chat groups, because it needs the ability to handle conflict.
Another thing to keep in mind is that in the medium term (realistically, 2-8 years? Not sure), MEV-Boost will be replaced by in-protocol PBS, so the structure does not need to last forever, but we can’t assume PBS will come quickly.
What does all this imply? Some kind of parallel version of AllCoreDevs? Definitely not a simple question.