Follow the Builders - The Daily Gwei #282

The builders will set us free.

Jul 2, 2021

“Miner Extractable Value” or “MEV” - by now, almost all of you have heard about this fun little property of blockchains and you may have already looked into exactly what it is and why it’s a big deal. If you haven’t, you can read this research piece from Charlie Noyes for a primer on MEV and this master thread from Robert Miller is a good read to dive deeper.

Philip Daian @phildaian

""Flashbots have disincentivized the search for real solutions." lolno. As someone who's been working on mitigations for years (submarine sends, advising Uniswap, hundreds of conversations with very DEX project).... MEV mitigations got 0 industry attention until Flashbots. 😉

Liyi Zhou @lzhou1110

@pmcgoohanCrypto @obaidkav @phildaian Thanks, @obaidkav, this is a great post. @pmcgoohan "Flashbots have disincentivized the search for real solutions," is something I'm concerned about as well. I am also working on solutions to mitigate MEV. I have put more details here in this tweet: https://t.co/zqmwSRQNcP

Now, make no mistake - MEV is an ecosystem-wide issue for Ethereum (and other expressive blockchains) and in the long-run needs to be addressed and its adverse effects need to be minimized as much as possible - and this is exactly what is happening. As Philip Daian says in his tweet above, MEV has been a thing for years but it’s only over the last few months that the majority of people have started paying attention to it due to the rise of Flashbots. Because of this, we now have thousands more eyeballs on this issue that was previously relegated to the “niche” corners of the Ethereum ecosystem.

This is now where I get to the actual point of today’s piece - the notion that Ethereums builders are very powerful because they embrace problems rather than rejecting them. From MEV to scalability woes to early issues with PoS - Ethereum’s builders have always met these challenges head on which has resulted in what we have today - a growing MEV research/mitigation ecosystem, tens of independent layer 2 projects on mainnet or testnet and a fully fledged unique proof of stake consensus mechanism that powers the eth2 Beacon Chain. Not only that, but we also have an extremely vibrant app layer across DeFi, NFTs, DAOs and really so much more.

This is what I really mean when I say “follow the builders” because I believe that they are the ones who push this space forward more than anyone else. Now, the “builders” group is made up of more than just developers and researchers - it also includes practically anyone who is actively adding value to the ecosystem whether that be as an educator, a marketer, a designer or anything else - as long as you’re pushing this space forward in some way, you’re a builder. And I believe that Ethereum has a near-monopoly on the best and brightest builders in this space - even if these builders are working on other ecosystems, they tend to still contribute value to Ethereum in some way.

Of course, none of what people build would mean very much without users to take advantage of it and it can sometimes turn into a bit of a “chicken and egg” problem (who came first, the users or the builders?) but I think Ethereum has clearly broken through that barrier at this point. The Ethereum ecosystem has a vibrant community of users, builders and all of those that fit into both camps and I believe this is why Ethereum has already won.

Have a great weekend everyone,
Anthony Sassano

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All information presented above is for educational purposes only and should not be taken as investment advice.