Flashbots: MEV robots are clogging up the blockchain faster than the network can scale

PANews reported on June 17 that according to The Block, research institute Flashbots released a report warning that MEV (maximum extractable value) has become the main limiting factor for blockchain expansion. The report pointed out that junk transactions generated by MEV robots are consuming block space at a rate that exceeds network expansion, resulting in the failure of the technical breakthrough of original throughput. The study found that junk robots consume more than 50% of gas fees on mainstream OP-Stack Rollup but only pay less than 10% of handling fees, pushing up the basic transaction costs of ordinary users. Among them, Coinbase's Base network is the most serious, with two robots contributing more than 80% of junk transactions. The problem also exists in networks such as Solana, where MEV robots occupy about 40% of block space. The report believes that economic congestion (rather than technical bandwidth) has become the actual expansion bottleneck, and the existing "junk transaction auction" market structure has exacerbated this problem. Flashbots proposed to reform the existing bidding mechanism and adopt an off-chain auction solution to reduce network congestion and reduce fees.