Ethereum validators use MEV-boost to outsource their block construction to a marketplace of relays and builders, including the Flashbots Builders. This dashboard only captures metrics about the Flashbots Builders.

Flashbots is a research and development organization formed to mitigate the negative externalities posed by Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) to stateful blockchains, starting with Ethereum. Flashbots operates a block builder and an MEV-boost relay on Ethereum.

The Flashbots team and investors own the Flashbots Builder. Currently, Flashbots does not take a cut of the fees paid by searchers. Flashbots' investors include Paradigm, among others.

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Flashbots

# Flashbots Average fees per user (AFPU) Methodology

## 1. Overview

Average fees per user (AFPU) for Flashbots measures the daily average MEV (Maximum Extractable Value) fees earned per unique block builder. This metric quantifies the efficiency and profitability of the Flashbots ecosystem by dividing total daily builder payments by the number of distinct builders active each day. It helps assess the economic value distribution within the MEV infrastructure market.

## 2. Data sources

- **Ethereum beacon chain blocks**: Block metadata including `fee_recipient`, `extra_data`, and `transaction_count` for consensus layer information
- **Ethereum mainnet blocks**: Execution layer block data with block numbers and transaction counts for validation and joining
- **Ethereum mainnet transactions**: Complete transaction records including `value`, `from_address`, `to_address`, and `transaction_index` for identifying builder payments
- **End-of-day token price feeds**: WETH and ETH price data for USD conversion of fee values

## 3. Step-by-step calculation

### Component A: Validator payment identification
- **Purpose**: Identifies legitimate builder payments within the Flashbots MEV ecosystem
- **Logic**: Joins beacon chain block data with Ethereum execution layer data to identify builder payments. Focuses specifically on the last transaction in each block by matching `transaction_index` with `transaction_count - 1`. Filters for valid builder payments where the `fee_recipient` (block builder) matches the `from_address` of the payment transaction, or where payments originate from specific Ultrasound relay addresses (Beaver, Rsync, and Titan builders). This captures the MEV payments made by builders to validators.
- **Key fields**: `fee_recipient` (builder address), `value` (payment amount in wei), `from_address` and `to_address` (payment direction), `transaction_index` (position validation)

### Component B: Fee calculation and USD conversion
- **Purpose**: Processes raw payment values into standardized daily fee amounts in USD
- **Logic**: Converts payment values from wei to ETH by dividing by 10^18. Applies end-of-day price feeds to convert ETH amounts to USD values. Aggregates all builder payments by day using daily time boundaries (timestamp truncation). Handles token standardization by treating all payments as WETH equivalent for consistency.
- **Key fields**: `fees` (converted ETH amounts), `token_address` (standardized to WETH), `timestamp` (daily truncation), USD conversion factors

### Component C: Daily active user counting
- **Purpose**: Counts distinct builders (users) active each day using efficient probabilistic counting
- **Logic**: Identifies unique `fee_recipient` addresses as active users for each day. Uses HyperLogLog (HLL) probabilistic data structure for efficient distinct counting across multiple dimensions. Categorizes all users as 'builder' type within 'infrastructure' market sector. Aggregates counts across different breakdown levels including project-level, chain-level, user-type-level, and product-level views.
- **Key fields**: `user_address` (fee_recipient), `user_type` (always 'builder'), `chain` (always 'ethereum'), HLL aggregation functions

### Final aggregation
- **Combining components**: Joins daily fee totals with daily active user counts using the `calculate_arpu` macro, which performs a division operation between the fee metric and user DAU metric
- **Currency conversion**: Fees are converted to USD using end-of-day price feeds applied to ETH values after decimal correction
- **Time aggregation**: Both fees and user counts use consistent daily boundaries through timestamp truncation to day level
- **Final calculation**: AFPU equals total daily fees in USD divided by the count of distinct active builders for each day, with zero-filling applied for days with missing data to maintain continuous time series

*This methodology was automatically generated by Token Terminal's methodology analyzer.*

Flashbots

Average fees per user (AFPU)

Average fees per user (AFPU)

Competitive landscape