The Future of Value Capture: Rewarding the Infrastructure You Used

Validators and searchers extract ~$1B+ annually from user transactions, creating a hidden cost layer. This value is siphoned from users and dApps without contributing to network security or user experience.

• Value Leakage: Profits flow to off-chain entities, not the protocol.
• User Harm: Front-running and sandwich attacks degrade UX.
• Protocol Inefficiency: Block space is optimized for extractors, not users.

Proposer-Builder Separation (PBS) and protocols like EigenLayer and Flashbots SUAVE create a market for block space, allowing value to be captured and redistributed.

• Protocol Revenue: MEV can be captured as a network fee or burned.
• Staker Rewards: Validators earn via fair auction mechanics, not exploitation.
• User Alignment: Intent-based architectures (UniswapX, CowSwap) protect users and route surplus back.

Staking rewards will be weighted by the actual utility a validator provides, not just capital locked. Think EigenLayer restaking for AVSs or L2 sequencers paying fees to L1 stakers.

• Performance Metrics: Rewards tied to uptime, latency (~500ms), and data availability.
• Service Provision: Stakers become service providers for rollups, oracles, and bridges.
• Sustainable Yield: Shifts from pure inflation to fee-based, demand-driven income.

The Problem: Swaps across chains required users to pre-fund wallets and pay gas on the destination chain, creating a terrible UX. The Solution: UniswapX abstracts liquidity and execution into a network of fillers who compete on price, including cross-chain routes. The protocol directly compensates fillers for providing bridging infrastructure via auction fees, creating a market for cross-chain liquidity.

• Key Benefit: Users get a single, gasless signature experience.
• Key Benefit: Fillers (infrastructure) capture value proportional to the service they provide.

The Problem: New protocols (AVSs) must bootstrap their own decentralized validator set and trust network from scratch—a capital-intensive, slow process. The Solution: EigenLayer allows Ethereum stakers to restake their ETH to secure additional services (rollups, oracles, bridges). This creates a flywheel where infrastructure services pay for security from a shared pool.

• Key Benefit: AVSs instantly access ~$15B+ in pooled security capital.
• Key Benefit: Stakers (infrastructure providers) earn additional yield for providing a generalized security service.

The Problem: Many L1s and dApps use token burns (e.g., fee burning) to create deflationary pressure, hoping it accrues value to token holders. This does nothing to reward the actual infrastructure (validators, RPC providers, indexers) that keeps the chain running. The Solution: None. This is the anti-pattern. Value is destroyed instead of being directed to service providers, leading to long-term sustainability issues as infrastructure atrophies.

• Key Flaw: Burns create speculative pressure, not operational sustainability.
• Key Flaw: Core network operators are under-compensated, creating centralization risk.

The Problem: dApps need fast, reliable blockchain data queries, but running indexing infrastructure is costly and complex. The Solution: The Graph creates a marketplace where indexers stake GRT to provide query services, and consumers (dApps) pay for queries. Fees flow directly to indexers and delegators, with protocol inflation providing additional staking rewards.

• Key Benefit: Clear, on-chain value flow from consumer to infrastructure provider.
• Key Benefit: ~600+ Indexers are economically incentivized to maintain high uptime and performance.

The Problem: In a max-throughput blockchain, users compete for block space. Without explicit fees, transactions fail during congestion, and validators have no incentive to prioritize them. The Solution: Solana's priority fee is a direct tip paid by users to validators for including and ordering their transactions. This explicitly rewards the compute and networking infrastructure at the moment of greatest demand.

• Key Benefit: Users get reliable transaction inclusion during peak load.
• Key Benefit: Validator revenue scales with network demand, aligning incentives.

The Problem: Lido provides critical liquid staking infrastructure but captures most of the value (staking rewards + MEV) for its token holders, while the underlying node operators (the actual infrastructure) are paid a fixed commission. The Solution? Debatable. While successful, this model centralizes infrastructure risk and creates a value capture imbalance. The protocol (LDO) captures the upside, while operators bear the slashing risk for a fixed fee. New models like Obol and SSV aim to rebalance this by focusing on decentralized operator sets.

• Key Tension: $30B+ TVL demonstrates demand but highlights centralization risk.
• Key Tension: Infrastructure providers (operators) are commoditized.

Value from transaction ordering is captured by a small group of searchers and validators, creating a centralized rent-seeking layer. This distorts incentives and increases user costs.

• Extracted Value: $1B+ annually in pure rent.
• Systemic Risk: Cartels can censor transactions or manipulate DeFi oracles.
• User Impact: Higher gas costs and worse execution prices for all.

Apps like Uniswap and Aave generate billions in fees but contribute little to the security or data availability of the underlying chains they depend on (Ethereum, Arbitrum).

• Value Leakage: ~$2B in annual protocol revenue secured by a separate, underfunded base layer.
• Sustainability Risk: If L1 security fails, all L2s and dApps fail with it.
• Current Model: Infrastructure is a public good, profit is privatized.

Infrastructure must capture value directly via native tokens and fee switches. Think EigenLayer for pooled security or Celestia for modular DA.

• Direct Alignment: Fees fund the resource providers (validators, sequencers, DA nodes).
• Sustainable Security: Creates a flywheel where usage strengthens the network.
• Emerging Models: EigenLayer restaking, Celestia DA fee burn, L2 sequencer fee splits.

Shift from transaction-based to outcome-based systems (UniswapX, CowSwap, Across). Users express a goal, solvers compete to fulfill it, and the protocol captures the efficiency gain.

• MEV Recapture: Solvers' profit becomes protocol revenue.
• Better UX: Users get guaranteed outcomes, not failed transactions.
• Infrastructure Reward: The routing layer (e.g., Across, LayerZero) is paid for its role, not bypassed.

Value capture mechanisms that look like securities (e.g., profit-sharing tokens) attract regulatory scrutiny. Howey Test failures could cripple the model.

• Legal Risk: SEC actions against Coinbase, Uniswap Labs set precedent.
• Fragmentation: Protocols may retreat to non-US jurisdictions, weakening network effects.
• Innovation Chill: Teams avoid sustainable models for fear of enforcement.

Value capture concentrated in a foundation treasury or VC-backed entity (e.g., early L2 sequencers) recreates Web2 rent-seeking, not decentralized infrastructure.

• Governance Risk: Centralized entities control fee switches and upgrades.
• Community Alienation: Leads to forks and ecosystem fragmentation.
• Missed Opportunity: Fails to credibly decentralize and secure the network long-term.

Block builders and searchers capture billions in MEV, while the underlying data and execution layers get scraps. The solution is to bake infrastructure rewards directly into the transaction flow.\n- Protocols like Flashbots SUAVE aim to democratize access and redistribute value.\n- Shared sequencers (e.g., Espresso, Astria) turn block space into a revenue-shared commodity.\n- The goal: shift value from pure extractors to essential providers of ordering and data.

Users express a desired outcome ("swap X for Y"), not a transaction. This creates a natural auction for solvers (like UniswapX, CowSwap) to compete on.\n- Infrastructure becomes a bidder, paying users for the right to fulfill their intent.\n- Protocols like Across use a solver network where relayers are compensated via a native token model.\n- Value flows to the most efficient resolver of user needs, not just the base chain.

Monolithic chains capture all fees. In a modular world (Celestia, EigenDA, Arbitrum), each layer (DA, execution, settlement) must capture value independently or perish.\n- Data Availability layers monetize via blob fees and potential token incentives.\n- Shared sequencers take a cut of transaction ordering revenue.\n- The result is a fee waterfall where value is distributed across specialized providers.

Protocols are moving beyond simple transaction fees to sophisticated value capture tied to usage.\n- Fee switches (like Uniswap's) direct a percentage of swap fees to treasury/stakers.\n- EigenLayer's restaking allows ETH stakers to secure new services and earn additional yield.\n- The infrastructure layer's token becomes a claim on the utility it provides, not just governance.

Bridging and messaging (LayerZero, Axelar, Wormhole) are critical infrastructure but have struggled with sustainable models beyond token incentives.\n- Native gas payments (e.g., paying for destination chain fees in source chain tokens) create a clean service fee.\n- Proof networks (like LayerZero's Decentralized Verification) can charge for attestations.\n- Value capture shifts from speculative tokenomics to fee-for-security.

ZK-Rollups need provers, but who pays for the massive compute? The current model is unsustainable.\n- Emerging prover markets (e.g., RiscZero, Succinct) let anyone run a prover and earn fees.\n- Proof aggregation services (like =nil; Foundation) batch proofs for cost efficiency, capturing value from scale.\n- The winning infrastructure will be the one that makes verification a profitable, decentralized business.