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Frequently Asked Questions
This world is confusing, but we are on this together 🌈
If you have a question, please ask here.
MEV is Maximal Extractable Value. It is the profit a block proposer (miner or validator) can make through their ability to arbitrarily include, exclude, or re-order transactions from the blocks they propose.
Read Maximal Extractable Value in the Ethereum docs.
You should run mev-boost to earn a fair share of the MEV extracted in the blocks you propose. Connecting your consensus client to mev-boost allows you to get full blocks from a network of block builders optimized for MEV extraction. This can increase validator rewards by 75.3%, or give an APR of 12.86% rather than a non-MEV APR of 7.35% from staking eth.
Read Why run mev-boost? and MEV in eth2 - an early exploration.
Yes. mev-boost is designed to be used by any validator, no matter the size of its stake.
In Ethereum proof-of-work we had no way to prevent small miners from misbehaving and stealing MEV. Once identified, they could just get a new identity and continue misbehaving. The solution was to make a list of allowed miners that were big enough to be concerned about their reputation. Their profit would be severely affected if they were removed from the allowed list. This resulted in one more incentive for the concentration of mining power in a few organizations.
The most significant change for MEV in Ethereum proof-of-stake is that with mev-boost now validators can be permissionless. The order is reversed: instead of the Flashbots relay sending blocks or bundles of transactions to the miners, now the validators request blocks to the Flashbots relay through mev-boost. The Flashbots relay in turn requests blocks to a network of builders and gives the header of the most profitable one to the validator, while holding the payload in escrow. Once the validator signs the header, the relay publishes the block payload. If at this moment the validator decides to propose a different block, they will have signed two blocks and will be slashed.
Note that this does not mean that the system is fully permissionless and decentralized, yet. The Flashbots relay is still trusted.
Read the open research questions and join us exploring possible solutions.
The alternative to running mev-boost would be to get blocks from your local execution client, which can only get transactions from the public mempool and is not optimized for MEV extraction, so your rewards are likely to be less.
Or to implement your own builder, which is a complicated task and still leaves you with the problem of finding good sources of transactions with high MEV.
As noted above, the system is not fully permissionless and decentralized, yet. The relay acts as a trusted escrow between the proposer and the builder. In this role it can affect both parties.
We strongly suggest you to connect mev-boost to the Flashbots relay, of course. This is actually the default, of course :). And it will be pretty profitable, stable, transparent, and fair. And fun: you will be contributing to the future explorations of the Flashbots collective, we are in this together and for the long run.
For over 2 years, at Flashbots we have been learning about MEV through the execution of our proof-of-work relay and our open research. We have collaborated with all the relevant organizations in the Ethereum ecosystem to better understand the risks of MEV and mitigate them in the best possible way. We have published our tools and data with extreme care to not break the stability of the Ethereum blockchain. Together with our friends we have been educating the other organizations in the space and assisting the people most affected by the rapid changes of the cryptographic economy.
With mev-boost we are executing the next step on our role as stewards of MEV in Ethereum. It solves the centralization problems that we saw in proof-of-work with the list of allowed miners and a single block builder. Now the remaining challenges are to design the security guarantees that enable multiple trustless relays and an auction mechanism that enables builders to get transactions and the block space for them.
Read the open research questions and join us exploring possible solutions.