In this week’s episode, Anna (https://twitter.com/annarrose) and James Prestwich (https://twitter.com/_Prestwich) chat with Phil Daian (https://twitter.com/phildaian) and Stephane Gosselin (https://twitter.com/thegostep) from the Flashbots (https://github.com/flashbots/) project. Flashbots is a research and development organization formed to mitigate the negative externalities and existential risks posed by miner-extractable value (MEV) to smart-contract blockchains
They talk about the Flashbots organization and mission as well as the evolving opportunities and dangers lurking in the mempool.
Miner extractable value (MEV) (https://arxiv.org/abs/1904.05234) is a measure devised to study consensus security by modeling the profit a miner (or validator, sequencer, or other privileged protocol actor) can make through their ability to arbitrarily include, exclude, or re-order transactions from the blocks they produce.
Here are some links to previous episodes, the project & MEV:
* Discussing Plasma and Storage Rent with Karl Floersch and Phil Daian (https://www.zeroknowledge.fm/17)
* Storage rent with Phil Daian (https://www.zeroknowledge.fm/25)
* Monsters in the Mempool with Dan Robinson from Paradigm (https://www.zeroknowledge.fm/153) on Zero Knowledge Podcast
* Flash Boys 2.0: Frontrunning, Transaction Reordering, and Consensus Instability in Decentralized Exchanges (https://pdaian.com/flashboys2.pdf)
* Flashbots: Frontrunning the MEV crisis (https://medium.com/flashbots/frontrunning-the-mev-crisis-40629a613752) on the Flashbots blog
* Flashbots post on Ethresear.ch (https://ethresear.ch/t/flashbots-frontrunning-the-mev-crisis/8251)
* Flashbots (https://github.com/flashbots/pm#flashbots)
* Flashbots Alpha (https://github.com/flashbots/pm#flashbots-alpha)
* MEV research roadmap (https://github.com/flashbots/mev-research/blob/main/research_roadmap.md)
* Flashbots MEV Fellowship - collective research process (https://github.com/flashbots/mev-research#mev-research)
* MEV Roast Calendar (https://calendar.google.com/calendar/u/0/embed?src=c_7lurqn12ecl64li0ms3kse5vok@group.calendar.google.com)
In case you missed the announcement - zkSessions: DeFi+Privacy (https://hopin.com/events/zksessions-defi-and-privacy) has been postponed until Feb 22. Grab your free spot here -> https://hopin.com/events/zksessions-defi-and-privacy
Thank you to this week’s sponsor Optimism PBC (https://optimism.io/).
Optimism PBC is a Public Benefit Corporation (PBC) building the Optimistic Ethereum Network and the Optimistic Virtual Machine to keep Ethereum half-full.
They are calling all curious hackers and seasoned engineers to Come work on the cutting edge of the most interesting problems to push the limits of blockchains, VMs and compilers. No blockchain experience required!
You'll work alongside global teams that are defining completely novel businesses and games that need our software to scale. If you're a developer who loves to see your code getting used by innovators around the world, then Optimism is your gateway to paradise.
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