The Future of Block Space is a Market, Not a Public Good

Public mempools are a free-for-all, exposing user intent to front-running and sandwich attacks. This creates a ~$1B+ annual MEV leakage and degrades UX for retail users.\n- Intent Exposure: Every transaction is a public signal for extractive bots.\n- Inefficient Allocation: Priority goes to the highest fee, not the highest value.

Protocols like UniswapX, CowSwap, and Across shift execution to a competitive, off-chain auction. Users submit signed intents (what they want), not transactions (how to do it).\n- MEV Resistance: Solvers compete to fill orders, capturing value for users.\n- Optimal Routing: Solvers find the best path across DEXs and bridges, improving price execution.

A single block processes everything sequentially, forcing L1s like Ethereum to batch high-value DeFi trades with low-value social transactions. This creates massive opportunity cost and poor resource allocation.\n- No Specialization: All ops compete for the same global state.\n- Congestion Spillover: One popular app can congest the entire network.

Restaking with EigenLayer allows ETH stakers to opt-in to sell cryptoeconomic security to new services (AVSs). This creates a market for security, a foundational block space component.\n- Modular Security: AVSs rent security instead of bootstrapping their own.\n- Capital Efficiency: Staked capital earns fees from multiple services simultaneously.

EIP-1559's base fee is a blunt instrument. It averages demand, failing to price congestion from specific applications or state access patterns. This leads to overpayment for simple transfers and underpricing of complex calls.\n- No Granularity: One fee for all contract interactions.\n- No Forward Markets: Users cannot hedge future gas costs.

Solana's local fee markets and proposals like Ethereum's EIP-7623 for execution tickets enable fine-grained pricing. Fees target specific, congested state (e.g., a popular NFT mint), not the whole chain.\n- Efficient Pricing: High-demand apps pay more, others pay less.\n- Predictable Costs: Users can bid for guaranteed future inclusion.

The Problem: New protocols need security but can't bootstrap their own validator set.\nThe Solution: A marketplace for pooled cryptoeconomic security. Restakers delegate stake from Ethereum to Actively Validated Services (AVSs), creating a $15B+ TVL security marketplace.\n- Capital Efficiency: Stake once, secure multiple networks.\n- Yield Generation: Stakers earn fees from AVS operators.

The Problem: Rollups are locked into a single, potentially extractive sequencer.\nThe Solution: A decentralized marketplace for rollup sequencing rights. Rollups auction blockspace, enabling shared sequencing and cross-rollup composability.\n- MEV Resistance: Auction design mitigates frontrunning.\n- Interoperability: Atomic cross-rollup transactions become possible.

The Problem: MEV extraction is opaque and centralized, creating negative externalities for users.\nThe Solution: A decentralized block builder and executor marketplace that separates the roles of searcher, builder, and proposer.\n- User Privacy: Transactions encrypted until execution.\n- Efficiency Gains: Optimal routing via a unified mempool.

The Problem: Launching and maintaining a performant rollup is operationally complex.\nThe Solution: RaaS (Rollup-as-a-Service) providers that commoditize rollup deployment, offering a marketplace of execution environments and shared sequencers.\n- Time-to-Market: Launch a rollup in minutes.\n- Modular Stack: Mix-and-match DA, sequencing, and proving.

The Problem: Naive FIFO sequencing is a myth; ordering is the market.\nThe Solution: Protocols like Astria and Radius are making ordering explicit and tradable. Radius uses encrypted mempools with commit-reveal schemes to create a fair auction for transaction placement.\n- Explicit Pricing: Ordering rights are priced in real-time.\n- Credible Neutrality: No single entity controls the queue.

The Problem: Waiting for L1 finality kills UX for high-frequency applications.\nThe Solution: Protocols offering fast, economically-secure preconfirmations. Users and apps pay a premium for sub-second finality guarantees backed by slashing conditions.\n- UX Revolution: Enables CEX-like speed on-chain.\n- Risk Markets: Finality becomes an insurable/tradable commodity.