Addressing Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) Challenges in Blockchain Scalability
The Growing Concern of MEV in Blockchain Networks
The blockchain landscape is currently grappling with a significant challenge known as Maximal Extractable Value (MEV), which has surfaced as a crucial bottleneck for scalability. As various developers strive to tackle this issue, the team at Flashbots has released a recent study proposing potential solutions.
Flashbots’ Critical Findings on Economic Inefficiencies
In a comprehensive report, Robert Miller, who leads product development at Flashbots, highlights the consuming nature of on-chain bot activities. These bots are threatening the operational efficiency of high-capacity blockchain networks, including Ethereum and its Layer-2 solutions, as well as Solana.
Miller indicated, “With leading platforms racing to enhance scalability, the economic challenges imposed by MEV are becoming increasingly evident across the sector.” He noted that significant on-chain searching activities are now occupying a major proportion of the resources within these high-throughput networks.
Imbalance Between MEV and Normal Transactions
The study reveals a troubling disparity between standard transactions and those driven by MEV. According to the data, MEV bots constitute more than half of the gas fees on popular rollups like Optimism, Base, Unichain, and World, while accounting for less than 10% of the fees collected for transaction processing. Similar trends have been observed on Solana, where bots utilize 40% of the available blockspace yet contribute only 7% of the transaction fees.
The report cites a notable incident on Base, where a surge in gas throughput—11 million gas per second from November 2024 to February 2025—was entirely taken up by spam bots, equivalent to three Ethereum mainnets’ full capacities.
Economic Repercussions for Users and Systems
Although this situation may not seem alarming for average users at first glance, the economic fallout is considerable. Flashbots discovered that executing a single successful arbitrage transaction on Base necessitated around 132 million gas in failed attempts, a volume equivalent to nearly four complete Ethereum blocks. This dynamic, characterized as a “spam auction,” occurs when searchers, lacking visibility in private mempools, inundate the network with transactions while competing for MEV opportunities, thereby escalating user costs.
Proposing Solutions to Combat MEV Inefficiencies
To mitigate this issue, Flashbots has put forth a dual-faceted solution. First, they recommend the implementation of programmable privacy via Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs), which would allow searchers to backrun private transactions without risking sandwich attacks or data leaks. This concept builds upon experiments conducted in 2024 with TDX, which successfully captured 440 bundles through a trustless method.
Second, the organization advocates for explicit bidding systems aimed at facilitating efficient price-based auctions for transaction ordering. This proposed system could transform chaotic spam into organized market transactions.
Miller emphasized the innovation behind TEEs, stating, “We are testing Trusted Execution Environments to give searchers the visibility they require without enabling sandwich attacks.” He added, “TEEs ensure that particular code executes with data kept confidential even from the machine’s operator.”
Impacts of Proposed Strategies
The implications of these solutions could be transformative. For blockchain networks, transitioning to spam-free environments could result in increased revenue. For developers and end-users, this shift promises a reduction in fees, stability, and actual improvements in capacity.
By addressing the concerns of MEV, the blockchain community can aim for a more efficient and scalable future, ultimately benefiting users and developers alike.