Flashbot - Is There an Equivalent to a Research Group Like This in Academics?

Flashbot mostly works on very applied engineering questions related to MEV. The company also has a research arm that aims to produce original research and academic quality research by taking some of this redistribution and using it on research. "To accomplish these goals of eliminating information asymmetry, we need to understand where that asymmetry is going to come from long term," says ZK.

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In this week’s episode, Anna and James Prestwich chat with Phil Daian and Stephane Gosselin from the Flashbots project. Flashbots is a research and development organization formed to mitigate the negative externalities and existential risks posed by miner-extractable value (MEV) to smart-contract blockchains

They talk about the Flashbots organization and mission as well as the evolving opportunities and dangers lurking in the mempool.

Miner extractable value (MEV) is a measure devised to study consensus security by modeling the profit a miner (or validator, sequencer, or other privileged protocol actor) can make through their ability to arbitrarily include, exclude, or re-order transactions from the blocks they produce.

Here are some links to previous episodes, the project & MEV:

Discussing Plasma and Storage Rent with Karl Floersch and Phil Daian
Storage rent with Phil Daian
Monsters in the Mempool with Dan Robinson from Paradigm on Zero Knowledge Podcast
Flash Boys 2.0: Frontrunning, Transaction Reordering, and Consensus Instability in Decentralized Exchanges
Flashbots: Frontrunning the MEV crisis on the Flashbots blog
Flashbots post on Ethresear.ch
Flashbots
Flashbots Alpha
MEV research roadmap
Flashbots MEV Fellowship - collective research process
MEV Roast Calendar

In case you missed the announcement - zkSessions: DeFi+Privacy has been postponed until Feb 22. Grab your free spot here -> https://hopin.com/events/zksessions-defi-and-privacy

Thank you to this week’s sponsor Optimism PBC.

Optimism PBC is a Public Benefit Corporation (PBC) building the Optimistic Ethereum Network and the Optimistic Virtual Machine to keep Ethereum half-full.

They are calling all curious hackers and seasoned engineers to Come work on the cutting edge of the most interesting problems to push the limits of blockchains, VMs and compilers. No blockchain experience required!

You'll work alongside global teams that are defining completely novel businesses and games that need our software to scale. If you're a developer who loves to see your code getting used by innovators around the world, then Optimism is your gateway to paradise.

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