A new report entitled MEV and the boundaries of scalesInvestigates the enormous volume of mev -spam that compensates for improvements in blockchain throughput.
Effects of extra traffic include higher costs for users of popular Ethereum “Layer-Two” (L2) scale networks.
Similar trends on Solana and other L2S left flashbots to do their own deep dive in rollups built through the OP -Pile (optimism, base, unichain and world). The findings show how spam transactions take a significant part of the available blockspace during paying disproportionately lower costs To do this.
Read more: Defi trader hit by mev attack Changed 440k USDC for only 10k USDT
Maximum extremely value (MEV) is a practice that traditionally means scanning the “mempool” of current transactions to insert a profitable trade according to the actions of other users.
Front, backring and sandwich attacks are all usual MEV tactics. The process is usually highly specialized, which leads to a dog-eat-dog world of bots fighting for peak efficiency and the corresponding rewards.
However, there is no public mempool on rollups such as they studied. With the low-fee environment with high transit, bots can follow a dragnet approach instead, where transactions are submitted that read prices about several fairs in chains.
If a profitable price deviation is found, they take the arbitration. If not, the transaction will be broken down.
The very competitive winner-takes-all landscape of MEV means that the activity is heavily concentrated, with alone Two seekers are responsible for more than 80% of the spam on the baseFor example.
Miller emphasizes a successful example on the basis of a bone with a hit percentage of about one in 350 attempts, in which $ 0.02 are spent on gas costs to only benefit $ 0.12.
“The actual costs of this one successful arbitration are shocking,” he writes, revealing that around 132 million gas per single successful arbitration was spent – equal to nearly four full Ethereum blocks.
“Keep in mind,” he adds, “this was one of the many who competed for this opportunity, so the actual costs for the chain are even higher.”
The effects of all this spam are several. The report notes that, in addition to consuming up to 60% of the available blockspace, Mev -Bots pay less than 10% of the total reimbursements. The extra traffic that hides the network also results in a “persistent, artificially high basic line for transaction costs” for regular users.
In addition to consuming a maximum of 60% of the available blockspace, MEV bots pay less than 10% of the total reimbursements.
Such an inefficient use of the available blockspace leads to a considerable delay in “effective gas outlet”, a metric that have calculated flashbots as “the gas per second A -Rollup processes after deduction of the gas used by spambots.”
The delay between effective transit and improvements in the total transit is clear, whereby the spam transactions of MEV seekers record the difference.
The proposed Solutions Center of the report on allowing seekers who have access to the (currently private) pool of current transactions and a more efficient auction process for having included their MEV transactions in a block.
This would make targeted and probably more profitable, operation possible, Instead of a spam-based approach.
However, it emphasizes that there must be limitations on how [the bots] Can use that information ‘to prevent Predatory MEV activity.
Miller signs with “The conversation about scales is too narrow. We increasingly know how to build rough technical transit; the new border is economic.” The full report is available on the Flashbots blog.
SPAM transactions by MEV -Zoekers record the difference between effective and total transit.
However, it is not all spam
Although MEV bots are often seen in a poor light, they are not all spam and sandwiches.
Multiple attempted hacks of decentralized financial (Defi) platforms have been collected as profitable transactions from Bots and Frontrun, with the resulting profit that ends with the bone instead of the original hacker.
In many cases, the proceeds are returned by the owner of De Bot, who may or may not take a premium.
Just this morning, one $ 120,000 hack from Ethereum-Based Meta-Pool Was in the front by a mev -bot, according to blockchain security company Quillaudits.
Read more: Whitehat Hacker saves $ 1.5 million from First Defi Hack from 2025
Even today, a “sniper” who specializes in being first to be newly launched tokens, managed to dump a single spark for almost $ 20,000 USDT only 11 seconds after the airdrop went live.
SPK is currently trading at around $ 0.06, according to Coinmarketcap, which comes out as a cool profit of 3,333% for the sniper.