// GLOSSARY -- DEFI

What is Flashbots?

1 min read Updated

Flashbots is a research and development organization building infrastructure to mitigate the negative effects of MEV — including Flashbots Protect (private transactions) and MEV-Boost (proposer-builder separation).

WHY IT MATTERS

Flashbots addresses MEV's externalities. Before Flashbots, MEV extraction caused: failed transactions (gas wars), network congestion (priority gas auctions), and user exploitation (sandwich attacks). Flashbots created infrastructure to make MEV extraction more orderly.

Key products: Flashbots Protect (private mempool preventing sandwich attacks), MEV-Boost (connecting validators to block builders), and SUAVE (future decentralized block building). These tools have become standard Ethereum infrastructure.

The majority of Ethereum blocks are now built through MEV-Boost, demonstrating Flashbots' impact on the MEV supply chain.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

What is Flashbots Protect?
A private transaction submission service. Your transaction goes directly to block builders, bypassing the public mempool. This prevents front-running and sandwich attacks on your trades.
What is MEV-Boost?
Software that connects Ethereum validators to block builders. Builders compete to create the most valuable block, and validators select the highest-paying one. This separates building from proposing.
Is Flashbots decentralized?
MEV-Boost is open-source and widely used. Flashbots Protect relies on Flashbots infrastructure. SUAVE aims to decentralize the block building process entirely.

FURTHER READING

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