Solutions to Guard Against MEV Theft [Research Paper]

@ken has completed a draft of a research report on Forced Exits. This paper was approved funding by the GMC during round 1. (Link to Application) (Link to Award Results)

The 34-page discusses Ethereum staking concepts and strategies to combat MEV theft. It covers staking rewards, MEV, and methods to detect and prevent MEV theft, including off-chain and on-chain solutions such as forced exits.

A draft copy for review and comment can be found here.

I think its timing will be quite useful with the tokenomic design under current consideration and the early planning efforts for Megapools and Saturn design objectives.
- Ken

I’m sharing it here to enhance visibility and to encourage any questions, critiques, or comments on the paper.

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My takeaway from this paper is that all MEV theft prevention solutions have a fatal flaw that make them not fix the problem except for the reduced / negative commission rate solution. Every other solution might add a roadblock to MEV theft, but the roadblock can be circumvented.

If Ethereum is able to enshrine burning MEV, that would also potentially fix this.

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Hi @ken – have you considered how context has changed since this was commissioned, and thus value to RP? In particular:

What I believe survives is:

  • A general overview
  • Section 4.1.1 perhaps… but frankly this sounds like a totally different protocol (Diva) more than RP
  • Section 4.1.2 has potential - though it would require some pretty RP-specific work from relays to make this concrete imo

While these things are nice, I think this is dramatically less valuable than it would have been back in 1/2023 when the GMC agreed to pay $15k for it. Wdyt?