Trend: MEV activity is surging on the Ethereum network.

The data used in this article comes from the blocks between Ethereum blocks 11834049 (mined on February 11) and 12196601 (mined on April 8), organized by Etherscan & Flashbots. Since the publication of the seminal paper "Flash Boys 2.0" by Phil Daian et al. in April 2019, MEV (that is, "Maximal Extractable Value", the maximum extractable value, formerly known as "Miner Extractable Value" (miner extractable value)) in A theoretical shadow is cast over Ethereum and other smart contract blockchains. Then in August 2020, Paradigm Research Partner Dan Robinson published a blog post titled "Ethereum is a Dark Forest", revealing how this theory has become a reality on the blockchain. While this is seen as a frightening reality, the extent of MEV activity was less clear before. This gave birth to Flashbots, a team working to increase transparency and democratize Ethereum’s dark forest. Since late 2020, they have been steadily expanding community awareness of MEV, including the release of MEV-Geth. Editor's note: MEV-Geth is a custom-made Ethereum node client, run by the Ethereum mining pool. The mechanism of Flashbots is to be able to fight against arbitrage robots on the Ethereum network (such as rush-running robots), resulting in a large number of such The bots were shut down, making MEV activity more "democratized". Miners (mining pools) can run MEV-Geth to mine MEV blocks to obtain income. The following is an excerpt from the announcement issued by Flashbots: "MEV-Geth is our (the Flashbots team) initial effort to promote the democratization of MEV. It is an upgrade to the go-ethereum client, enabling the block space auction mechanism of sealed bids to be used in transaction order. communication preferences. Fundamentally, MEV-Geth provides a more efficient communication channel for miners and bid traders. Although MEV-Geth’s proof of concept is incomplete in terms of trust models, we believe it is A major improvement on the status quo. The adoption of MEV-Geth can largely alleviate the massive block chain congestion caused by front-running bots and back-running bots.” Ali Dharma Academy Announcement of Top Ten Technological Trends of 2022: Global Privacy Computing and Mixed Reality Internet Selected: On December 28th, Alibaba Dharma Institute released the Top Ten Technological Trends of 2022, proposing ten technological trends that may become reality in 2022, covering artificial intelligence. The fields of intelligence, chips, computing, and communication are: Trend 1, AI for Science; Trend 2, co-evolution of large and small models; Trend 3, silicon photonics chips; Trend 4, green energy AI; Trend 5, flexible sensing robots; Trend 5 Sixth, high-precision medical navigation; trend seven, global privacy computing; trend eight, satellite computing; trend nine, cloud-network integration; trend ten, XR Internet. [2021/12/28 8:08:57] Front-running: refers to making a profit by making a specific transaction rank ahead of the target transaction (attacked transaction) in the same block, mainly for liquidation and arbitrage Transaction; trailing (back-running): refers to making a profit by making a specific transaction rank behind the target transaction in the same block, and the typical target is an information input mechanism (Oracle) transaction or a large order transaction; a sandwich attack (sandwich attack) attack): The combination of the above two forms of attack makes the target transaction happen to be caught in the middle of two specific structured transactions, thereby making a profit. The sandwich attack greatly broadens the scope of the attack. The attacker's first construction transaction creates greater transaction price fluctuations. After the target transaction is executed, the second construction transaction is executed immediately, and the tokens that launched the attack are exchanged to complete the acquisition. beneficial. — From Ethereum Enthusiasts Since then, as the debate on EIP-1559 culminated in February, a community call around the proposal in late February brought more attention to MEV among the Ethereum miner community. Since EIP-1559 (by destroying BASEFEE) will remove lucrative transaction fees from miner income, combined with MEV-Geth providing easy upgrade options, this already makes MEV very attractive to many miners (Note: MEV activity generates an “unconventional” income stream for miners), leading to a surge in mining pools participating in MEV activity in recent weeks. Google Trends: Nigeria ranks No. 1 in search-zce interest in Bitcoin and blockchain regions: Jinse Finance reported that according to Google Trends data, in the past 7 days of search-zce interest, Nigeria has become the region with the highest search-zce interest for "bitcoin". In the ranking of "bitcoin" search-zce popularity displayed by region, the top five are: Nigeria, Austria, Switzerland, Ghana, and Germany. The five countries/regions with the highest popularity of "blockchain" in the world are: Nigeria, Ghana, China, Côte d'Ivoire, and St. Helena. [2020/3/8] The graph above: Since 2015, the percentage change of transaction fees (red part) in the total monthly income of Ethereum miners. Before we start discussing the rapid growth of MEV, it is necessary to understand what a MEV transaction actually looks like. Most MEVs involve manipulating the order of transactions. This can be achieved in the following way: Gas fee bidding, that is, you (such as an arbitrage robot) make sure that your transaction is packaged by (miners) just before or after the target transaction by making the gas fee bid just above or below the target transaction Confirmation; or "bribe" the miner, so that the miner directly queues the transaction in the block you choose. As far as case 1 above is concerned, if you see one or more failed transactions, the transaction fee is the same as or slightly lower than the transaction fee of another transaction that was successfully packaged before it. transaction, it may be the occurrence of the above-mentioned first situation (specifically, the occurrence of the so-called "front-running transaction"). These failed trades are "victims" of MEV activity, or indicate that other arbitrage bots are losing out in the competition (and arbitrage bots are also competing with each other). Above: A failed front-running transaction contained in Ethereum block 11737990. The Gas price of this failed transaction is only 0.000000001 Gwei lower than the other two successful front-running transactions. (Click on the picture to enlarge) News | Google Trends: "Bitcoin" search-zce area ranks New Zealand in the top five: According to Google Trends data, Brazil has become the most searched area for "bitcoin" in the past 7 days. In the ranking of "bitcoin" search-zce popularity displayed by region, the top five are: Brazil, Turkey, Austria, South Africa, and New Zealand. The five countries/regions with the highest popularity of "blockchain" in the world are: South Korea, Ukraine, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and India. [2019/9/23] Regarding the second case above, when a mined block contains one or more transactions with a very low Gas price (such as 0 gwei or 1 gwei) , it is likely that the second case occurred. Above: A sandwich attack on a transaction transferring 30 ETH occurred in Ethereum block 12209917. (Click on the image to enlarge) While in many cases the exact way in which the above transactions work may not be clear (such as the specific "bribe" amount in case 2 above), for the Flashbots transaction these are transparent, These MEV transactions can be viewed by summarizing asset inflows & outflows to related addresses for a group of transactions. For example, by listing the exact amount of Token and ETH transferred in the first 3 transactions in Ethereum block 12165347... Above: Address 0x000..241 The case of "bribing" F2Pool is evident in transaction #3 displayed. ...and summarizing the net inflow & outflow of each address and Token, we can see that the arbitrage robot 0x000..241 and F2Pool (F2Pool) shared the arbitrage profit of 0.04 ETH equally. News | Google Trends: The search-zce volume for "Ethereum" in China is second only to Kosovo, but the search-zce volume for "Bitcoin" is negligible: Google Trends data shows that the country with the largest per capita search-zce volume for "Bitcoin" is Nigeria, and "Ethereum" ( Ethereum) with the most searches per capita is Kosovo. This appears to be related to cryptocurrency-related activity in the region. According to a Reuters survey last year, Kosovo is a very popular place for cryptocurrency mining. The per capita search-zce volume of "Ethereum" in China is also very high, second only to Kosovo, but its search-zce volume for "Bitcoin" is negligible. In Ghana, the situation is just the opposite. The country is one of the countries with the highest search-zce volume for "Bitcoin," but Google Trends data shows that the country's residents are not that interested in Ethereum. It should be noted that these data are based on English searches and come from Google. Therefore, it may fail to count scientifically those countries where English is not widely spoken or where Google is not a popular search-zce engine. [2019/6/12] Using data from Etherscan, Flashbots, and an address identified as an Ethermine mining pool, we see a significant increase in the number of blocks containing "bundled transactions" over the past month. Note: "Bundled transactions" refers to some transactions that are ordered in a block in an unconventional way, usually as part of a front-running transaction, a trailing transaction, or a sandwich attack. Above: The number of blocks containing "bundled transactions" has spiked over the past month. Source: Etherscan.io In other words, blocks containing "bundled transactions" accounted for 30% of the total number of blocks mined in the first week of April! News | "Forbes" contributor releases six major trends of renewable energy in 2019: "Energy blockchain and Internet of Things" are listed: Recently, "Forbes" contributor James Ellsmoor published an article predicting the six major development trends of renewable energy in 2019, They are: Energy Storage, Microgrids and Artificial Intelligence, Energy Blockchain and Internet of Things, Grid Parity and Cost Falling, Positive Commitments, and Advances in Energy Access in Developing Countries. [2019/1/2] Above: In the past month, the number of blocks containing "bundled transactions" as a percentage of the total number of blocks mined per week has surged from 1% to 30%. Source: What are the mining pools involved in Etherscan.io? The data shows that all top Ethereum mining pools are included. Prior to March of this year, UUPool was the only mining pool actively participating in “bundle transactions”; in recent weeks, other largest Ethereum mining pools have also joined, eclipsing the former. Above: Since February, the number of blocks containing "bundled transactions" dug up by major Ethereum mining pools has increased every week. Source: Etherscan.io Among them, Ethermine is currently the only mining pool that does not adopt MEV-Geth, they run their own MEV beta (see the picture below). Above: On March 18, the official Twitter of Bitfly, the parent company of the Ethermine mining pool, stated that the mining pool has launched its own MEV beta program to compensate for the upcoming reduction in mining rewards due to the adoption of EIP-1559. From these mined blocks, we can see the total amount of ETH "bribed" to miners: as of writing, a total of 3404 ETH (equivalent to $7.4 million) has been paid to miners. Although compared with the cumulative transaction fees of about 797,000 ETH paid by the entire Ethereum network from February to March, this fee only accounts for about 0.4%. There is still more room for growth in the MEV value extractable by Ethereum miners. Note: Since Ethermine is not using MEV-Geth, their "bribe" proceeds are not visible on-chain and are therefore not included in this data. Above: The "bribe" income growth of the major Ethereum mining pools, among which the "bribe" income of Spark Pool (Xinghuo Mining Pool) changed from 0 to 1 within a week, and increased rapidly. Source: Etherscan.ioFlashbots' MEV-Inspect shows that the cumulative value of MEV extracted in the current Ethereum network (not just those who use Flashbots MEV-Geth) has exceeded 360 million US dollars (Note: MEV-Inspect is Flashbots A visual MEV indicator created to monitor Ethereum blocks). Above: Cumulative extracted MEV value growth trend in the Ethereum network since January 1, 2020. Source: https://explore.flashbots.net Finally, we look at the number of Flashbots transactions contained in a single Ethereum block. As of now, the most common occurrence in a single block is to contain 3 Flashbots transactions, which indicates that sandwich attacks are the most popular type of MEV activity (a typical pattern of this kind of MEV activity is: 1st transaction and 3rd transaction). The first transaction is an arbitrage transaction, and the second transaction sandwiched between the two is the target attack transaction). Above: the frequency of Flashbots transactions included in a single block, the frequency of which contains 3 Flashbots transactions is the highest.

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