The Future of Fee Markets in a Modular, AA-Powered World

Rollups outsource sequencing for speed, creating a single point of failure and censorship. This centralizes fee market control and enables front-running and transaction reordering at scale.\n- Single Point of Censorship: A malicious sequencer can block user transactions.\n- MEV Extraction: Centralized sequencers can capture all MEV, disincentivizing a competitive market.

Decentralized sequencer sets (e.g., Espresso, Astria) and Proposer-Builder Separation (PBS) break the monopoly. This creates a competitive auction for block space, routing transactions to the most efficient execution layer.\n- Censorship Resistance: Multiple sequencers prevent single-entity control.\n- MEV Redistribution: PBS allows specialized builders to compete, redistributing value to validators/users via MEV-Boost-like mechanisms.

AA wallets enable intent-based transactions (e.g., UniswapX, CowSwap). This shifts power from users to centralized solvers who fulfill intents, creating a new cartel risk.\n- Opaque Pricing: Solvers control the execution path and can extract hidden spreads.\n- Cartel Formation: A few dominant solvers can collude, negating the benefits of permissionless competition.

Force solvers to provide cryptographic proofs of optimal execution (e.g., SUAVE, Flashbots Protect). On-chain reputation systems and slashing conditions punish malicious behavior.\n- Execution Proofs: Use ZK proofs or fraud proofs to verify solver claims.\n- Economic Bonding: Solvers post collateral that can be slashed for poor performance, aligning incentives.

Modular chains rely on cross-chain messaging (e.g., LayerZero, Axelar, Wormhole). A dominant interoperability layer becomes a systemic risk, controlling liquidity flow and fee extraction across the entire stack.\n- Single Point of Failure: A bug or attack in the hub can freeze billions in cross-chain assets.\n- Rent Extraction: The hub can impose monopolistic fees on all connected rollups and appchains.

Move from trusted multisigs to light client bridges with fraud proofs (e.g., IBC, Near Rainbow Bridge). Decentralize the validator set and require heavy economic staking for security, making attacks economically irrational.\n- Trust Minimization: Light clients verify chain state directly, removing trusted intermediaries.\n- Staking Slashing: Malicious relayers lose significant stake, protecting the system's economic security.

Today's generalized block builders capture ~$1B+ annually in MEV, but this value is extracted from users via sandwich attacks and frontrunning. The builder's profit is the user's loss, creating misaligned incentives.

• Key Benefit 1: New fee markets can internalize MEV as a user-consented revenue stream (e.g., via intents).
• Key Benefit 2: Shifts value from pure extractors to infrastructure that provides expressiveness and privacy.

Instead of submitting a transaction, users submit a signed intent (e.g., "I want X token at Y price"). A network of solvers competes to fulfill it, paying the network fee and keeping the surplus. This commoditizes block building.

• Key Benefit 1: User gets guaranteed execution at the best discovered price.
• Key Benefit 2: Fee market shifts to solver competition, aligning profits with user outcomes.

Modularity creates a four-role stack. The Proposer (validator) selects a block. The Builder assembles it. The Solver (e.g., Across, Anoma) wins intent auctions. The Settler (e.g., LayerZero, Chainlink CCIP) finalizes cross-domain state. Value accrues to the scarcest layer.

• Key Benefit 1: Settlement and data availability become the new moats, not execution.
• Key Benefit 2: Enables unified liquidity across chains via shared intent standards.

Account Abstraction wallets (ERC-4337) are the perfect on-ramp for intent-based systems. Users sign meta-transactions with sponsored gas and batched operations, abstracting away the underlying fee market complexity.

• Key Benefit 1: Paymasters can subsidize fees and capture value via order flow.
• Key Benefit 2: Enables session keys for seamless, gasless interactions with dApps and solvers.

Builders face a strategic fork: integrate the full PBSS stack (like EigenLayer) or specialize in one hyper-optimized layer (like Espresso for sequencing). Vertical integration captures more value but risks bloat.

• Key Benefit 1: Specialization enables ~50% lower latency and better capital efficiency.
• Key Benefit 2: Integration offers one-stop-shop reliability for large applications.

In a mature modular ecosystem, block building and solving become low-margin commodities. The real value accrues to reputation systems and liquidity bonds that guarantee solver honesty and proposer liveness (e.g., EigenLayer restaking).

• Key Benefit 1: Staked capital replaces trust, securing cross-domain intents.
• Key Benefit 2: Creates a sustainable yield source decoupled from user extraction.