The real cost of mevs for Blockchains

A new report from Flashbots has warned that the maximum extractable value (MEV) has become quietly one of the largest road barriers to Blockchain.

According to the research, the random “random mail auctions” consumed by MEV researchers systematically consumes most of the new capacity on high productivity chains such as Solana and Ethereum Layer-2S (L2S), and neutralizing the scaling gains and user fees.

MEV waste scale

MEV, mining workers or additional profit that it can extract by rearranging transactions, has long been controversial. But the latest flash Deep diving It explains that the problem has escalated from a moral to a bumpchain’s measurable traction.

When analyzing data from Rollups OP-Stack like Base and Fextism Mainnet, along with Solana results, Flashbots Survey showed how high-frequency flooding networks through endless speculation transactions in searching for quick profits.

According to researcher Bert Miller, the Solana robots use about 40 % of the block space with only 7 % contribution of the total fees. Meanwhile, on Ethereum L2S like Base and Op Mainnet, RAM is said to have more than half of the available gas but pay a small part of the costs compared to legal users.

Share Miller Stark example In X: Between November 2024 and February 2025, Base has strengthened its productivity by 11 million gas per second, which is more than three Mainnets ethereum, only to see all of them absorbed by RAM.

He stressed that the main issue lies in how robots work. Usually, it leaves the special mepools, designed to protect its users from Frontrunning, MEV Searpers is blind about the actual demand flows. Therefore, to maintain a competitiveness, these robots tend to spread complex transactions on the series to investigate for arbitration, which leads to the lost mountains of the account when there is no profit.

Miller pointed out that a successful arbitration of two hubin may cost up to 132 million gas in failed attempts, which is the size of four ETHEREUM blocks for each victory.

According to him, this dynamic means that although Blockchains can expand technically productively, MEV Spam creates an economic ceiling that makes raw bounce ineffective and costly everyone. The Flashbots thesis was described as “the dominant boundary of Blockchains” and suggested repairing how networks deal with the arrangement of transactions.

A road to economic efficiency

Research Organization suggested Fix It combines “programmable privacy”, which gives researchers a sufficient vision to avoid random mail while protecting users from predators, while providing explicit bids to the transaction priority. In this way, you believe that the competition will turn from unwanted messages to transparent auctions based on prices.

In another X Publication, Miller revealed that some early experiments, such as the use of reliable implementation environments (TEES) to impose robot behavior, already live. Last year, his fellow Angela Lu Declare This flash performed tests, as they included a robot inside a safe pocket, allowing it to capture the chances of pleasure without confidence while preventing harmful tactics such as sandwiches.

Only recently, the former CEO of Binance Changpeng Zhao put forward the idea of ​​dark gatherings using a guide to zero knowledge to counter MEV threat to decentralized financing space (Defi). Moreover, last year, Blockchain Oracle Procedlink has provided a solution called Smart Value Recaure (SVR) that would enable Defi applications to restore MEV “non -toxic”.

If it is refined, such innovations can transform MEV from a hidden drain into a sustainable source of chains, while lowering fees for ordinary users.