The Chopping Block: Why the Once-Taboo MEV Is Now a Core Part of Ethereum – Ep. 449

Welcome to “The Chopping Block!” – where crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, and Tarun Chitra chop it up about the latest news. This week, Flashbots co-founder Phil Daian joins the show to go deep on what maximal extractable value (MEV) means and how it’s shaping the Ethereum ecosystem.

Show highlights:

• how Phil started working in MEV and why he believes it resembles ‘Alice in Wonderland’
• Phil’s definition of MEV and when he realized this was an actual problem
• how Flashbots was born
• the story of how Vitalik didn’t care about sandwich attacks at the time Uniswap was released
• whether it’s possible to minimize MEV via more competition
• the never-ending debate about whether MEV should be accepted
• why Tarun thinks the concept of fair ordering is against nature
• how Bitcoin uses social norms to solve its weaknesses
• how Google is being called out in court for creating auction to front run its customers
• how Flashbots worked prior to and after Ethereum’s Merge
• why Flashbots complies with OFAC sanctions
• what is the Suave project and how it aims to decentralize Flashbots
• what the future of MEV looks like

Hosts

• Haseeb Qureshi, managing partner at Dragonfly Capital
• Tarun Chitra, managing partner at Robot Ventures
• Tom Schmidt, general partner at Dragonfly Capital

Guest:

Phil:

• Twitter

Disclosures

Links

The Block: Flashbots seeks up to $50 million at a billion-dollar valuation

CoinDesk: Opinion: Miners, Front-Running-as-a-Service Is Theft

CNN: DOJ sues Google over its dominance in online advertising market

Unchained: 51% of Ethereum Blocks Are OFAC Censored

Given the Sanctions on Tornado Cash, Is Ethereum Censorship Resistant? – Ep. 390

The Cost of Decentralization in 0x and EtherDelta

Previous coverage of Unchained on MEV:

• Why Is Ethereum Trying to Maximize Value From Users? Two Sides Debate