Ethereum’s MEV-Boost censorship issues are getting better
Important takeaways
- The number of Ethereum blocks produced by OFAC-compliant MEV-Boost relays fell below the 50% threshold yesterday.
- The calculation peaked at 79% on November 21st, and has been steadily declining since.
- No-nonsense relays like BloXRoute Max Profit and Ultra Sound Money have taken market share from OFAC-compliant relay Flashbots.
Share this article
Censorship risks over Ethereum’s block-producing industry melt away as OFAC-compliant MEV-Boost relays continue to build fewer and fewer blocks.
A steady decline
Ethereum’s censorship problems are slowly improving.
According to data from MEV Watch, the number of Ethereum blocks produced by OFAC-compliant MEV-Boost relays fell below the 50% threshold yesterday. On February 13, only 47% of blocks were produced by such relays; today the figure is 49%.
August 8, 2022, Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) added Ethereum-based privacy protocol Tornado Cash to its sanctions list, claiming the program was used for money laundering. Major service providers such as Circle and Infura immediately moved to blacklist Ethereum addresses associated with the protocol, as did Flashbots, an MEV research organization.
MEV stands for “Maximum Extractable Value”; the term refers to the arbitrage of on-chain trading opportunities by rearranging transactions within a block as it is produced. Flashbots claim to streamline the practice and mitigate its negative effects by offering an off-chain block-building marketplace in the form of MEV-Boost. The organization’s willingness to comply with OFAC sanctions was met with outcry from the crypto community; in response, Flashbots open-sourced their relay, allowing non-OFAC-compliant competitors to effectively participate in the Ethereum MEV marketplace.
Nevertheless, in the two months following Ethereum’s transition from Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake, the number of blocks built by so-called “OFAC-compliant” MEV-Boost relays rose from 9% to 79% , which led to censorship. concerns from the community.
However, after peaking on November 21, the number of blocks produced by censorious relays began to decline. While Flashbots built over 46% of all MEV-Boost blocks today, no-nonsense relays BloXRoute Max Profit and Ultra Sound Money took a healthy chunk of the MEV-Boost market share – 23.7% and 16.9% respectively.
Disclaimer: At the time of writing, the author of this piece owned BTC, ETH and several other crypto assets.
