Introduction

This week, Zero Knowledge catches up with the team working on Flashbots. We revisit the topic of MEV and explore the state of their research. The ZK Sessions event was postponed due to a snowstorm in Texas. Optimism PBC is calling all curious hackers and seasoned engineers to come work on the cutting edge of blockchains,. No blockchain experience required as they believe that talented engineers can problem-solve around any codebase.

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Episode notes

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.

Please reach out to join@optimism.io if you're interested in becoming part of this compassionate, hard-working team! People of all backgrounds are encouraged to apply.

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