MEV Cannot Coexist with True User Sovereignty

Public mempools broadcast your intent, allowing searchers to insert their own transaction ahead of yours for profit. This is a direct violation of transaction ordering sovereignty.\n- ~$1.3B+ extracted from DEX users since 2020.\n- Forces users into a zero-sum game against the network itself.\n- Enables targeted censorship of specific addresses or contract interactions.

Bots exploit predictable DEX trades by buying before you and selling after you, artificially worsening your price. This is a direct tax on user capital.\n- ~$500M+ stolen from retail traders via sandwiches.\n- ~5-50 bps of slippage per attack, often exceeding protocol fees.\n- Turns Uniswap, Curve liquidity into a predatory hunting ground.

To avoid public mempools, users and apps route orders to private RPCs and builders like Flashbots. This centralizes power and creates new rent-seeking intermediaries.\n- ~90%+ of Ethereum blocks are built by a few entities.\n- Creates information asymmetry and opaque auction markets.\n- Shifts sovereignty from the user to the block builder and relay cartel.

Public mempools broadcast user intent, creating a zero-sum game for searchers and validators. This leads to front-running, sandwich attacks, and billions in annual extracted value.

• Intent is weaponized against the user.
• Latency races centralize block building.
• Privacy is impossible without trusted operators.

Encrypt transactions until block inclusion. Flashbots' SUAVE aims to be a decentralized, neutral mempool and block builder network.

• Decouples execution from disclosure.
• Enables fair, competitive auction for block space.
• Preserves transaction privacy from general searchers.

Users submit desired outcomes, not transactions. Solvers compete to fulfill the intent optimally. This flips the MEV dynamic.

• User gets best execution, searchers keep residual as profit.
• Removes toxic orderflow from public view.
• Enables cross-chain swaps natively (see Across, CowSwap).

Route transactions through a private gateway (BloxRoute, Titan). The gateway runs an auction among builders, capturing MEV to share with the user/app.

• Direct monetization of order flow for users.
• Immediate privacy from the public mempool.
• Reduces builder centralization by diversifying flow.

Ethereum's PBS (via EIP-4844 and future upgrades) enforces a separation between the block proposer and builder at the consensus layer.

• Prevents proposer-level MEV extraction.
• Creates a credible-neutral market for block building.
• Foundation for all other solutions to plug into.

True sovereignty means users capture the value of their intent. This requires protocols that internalize MEV as a feature, not an externality. The fight is moving from hiding intent to owning it.

• Future DEXs are intent networks.
• Wallets become orderflow aggregators.
• The most valuable L1s will bake anti-MEV into consensus.

Front-running, sandwich attacks, and arbitrage bots extract value that rightfully belongs to users and protocols. This creates:\n- Perverse incentives for validators to reorder or censor transactions.\n- Degraded UX with unpredictable slippage and failed trades.\n- Centralization pressure as MEV capture favors the largest staking pools.

Shift from transaction-based to intent-based architectures. Users express desired outcomes (e.g., "swap X for Y"), not explicit instructions. Solvers compete off-chain, submitting optimal bundles. This requires:\n- Private transaction channels like Flashbots SUAVE or RIP-7212.\n- Intent-centric protocols like UniswapX and CowSwap.\n- Cross-domain standardization for a unified intent layer.

A sovereign chain needs a cryptographically enforced fair ordering layer. The blueprint:\n- Encrypted mempool: Transactions are hidden until block proposal via schemes like time-lock puzzles or SGX.\n- Leader election via VRF: Decentralized, unpredictable block proposer selection.\n- Threshold decryption: A committee (e.g., Drand network) unlocks transactions only after ordering is fixed.

For builders, the stack is now clear. Avoid generic EVM L2s. Instead:\n- Use a rollup framework with integrated privacy: Aztec, Espresso Systems, or Namada.\n- Incorporate a fair ordering service: Astria, Radius, or Fairblock.\n- Design for intents from day one: Make Across Protocol or Socket your primary bridge, not vanilla message bridges.

The next wave of infrastructure winners will not be general-purpose L1s. They will be:\n- Specialized privacy layers (TEE networks, ZK-proof systems).\n- Intent coordination networks and solver markets.\n- Cross-chain sovereignty protocols that preserve properties across domains (e.g., LayerZero V2 with anti-MEV configs).

Complete MEV eradication is impossible; it's economic entropy. The goal is minimization and fair redistribution. The endgame is:\n- Protocol-Captured MEV: Redirect extracted value to a public good or token holders (see EIP-1559).\n- User-Owned MEV: Let users auction their own transaction flow via MEV-Share-like models.\n- Verifiable Randomness: Finalize block ordering with a Chainlink VRF or Drand beacon to prevent last-look attacks.