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 Fees Methodology

## 1. Overview

This metric tracks the total fees paid by MEV (Maximum Extractable Value) block builders to Ethereum validators through the Flashbots ecosystem. The calculation identifies builder payments by analyzing the last transaction in each block, which typically represents the payment from the winning builder to the block's fee recipient (validator). This metric answers the business question: "How much value is being captured and redistributed through MEV infrastructure on Ethereum?"

The methodology focuses on detecting these payments through transaction pattern analysis, specifically targeting transactions where the sender matches the block's fee recipient or originates from known Ultrasound relay builder addresses.

## 2. Data sources

The calculation relies on several core Ethereum data sources:

- **Ethereum beacon chain block data**: Block metadata including fee recipients, transaction counts, and additional block information like `extra_data` fields
- **Ethereum execution layer block data**: Block numbers and transaction counts from the execution layer to validate beacon chain data
- **Ethereum transaction records**: Complete transaction details including timestamps, values, sender/receiver addresses, transaction indices, and input data
- **End-of-day token price feeds**: USD conversion rates for WETH token pricing
- **Token metadata**: WETH contract address and decimal precision information for proper value conversion

## 3. Step-by-step calculation

### Component A: Beacon chain block extraction
- **Purpose**: Extracts essential block metadata from the Ethereum beacon chain
- **Logic**: Retrieves distinct records containing block numbers, fee recipients (validator addresses), transaction counts, and extra data fields. This provides the foundation for identifying which validator should receive builder payments for each block
- **Key fields**: `block_number` for joining with other data sources, `fee_recipient` for identifying the target validator, `transaction_count` for locating the final transaction, and `extra_data` for additional block context

### Component B: Execution layer block validation  
- **Purpose**: Provides execution layer block data for cross-validation with beacon chain information
- **Logic**: Extracts block numbers and transaction counts from Ethereum execution layer blocks to ensure consistency with beacon chain data and validate transaction count accuracy
- **Key fields**: `block_number` (mapped from `number`) for joining operations and `transaction_count` for verification against beacon chain counts

### Component C: Transaction detail extraction
- **Purpose**: Captures complete transaction information needed to identify builder payments
- **Logic**: Retrieves all transaction details including block timestamps, transaction hashes, ETH values, sender and receiver addresses, input data, and transaction indices. Uses incremental processing to handle large transaction volumes efficiently with daily partitioning
- **Key fields**: `block_timestamp` for time-based aggregation, `transaction_hash` for unique identification, `value` for payment amounts, `from_address` and `to_address` for payment flow analysis, and `transaction_index` for identifying final transactions

### Component D: Builder payment identification
- **Purpose**: Identifies valid builder-to-validator payments from the combined blockchain data
- **Logic**: Joins beacon chain blocks, execution layer blocks, and transactions on block numbers. Focuses specifically on the last transaction in each block by filtering where `transaction_index` equals `transaction_count - 1`. Applies payment validation logic by including transactions where the fee recipient matches the sender address (indicating direct validator payments) or where the sender is a known Ultrasound relay builder address (Beaver: `0xa83114a443da1cecefc50368531cace9f37fcccb`, Rsync: `0x0affb0a96fbefaa97dce488dfd97512346cf3ab8`, or Titan: `0x9fc3da866e7df3a1c57ade1a97c9f00a70f010c8`)
- **Key fields**: `block_timestamp` for temporal tracking, `fee_recipient` for validator identification, `token_address` set to WETH contract address, and `fees` calculated by converting wei values to ETH through division by 10^18

### Final aggregation
- **Combining components**: The methodology processes builder payments through sequential filtering and validation, ultimately producing a stream of validator payment transactions with their associated timestamps, recipients, and ETH amounts
- **Currency conversion**: Applies USD conversion using end-of-day price feeds through the convert_to_usd_and_correct_decimals macro, maintaining ETH decimal precision without additional decimal corrections since the wei-to-ETH conversion is already applied
- **Time aggregation**: Groups payments by day using timestamp truncation to day boundaries, enabling daily fee summation across all identified builder payments
- **Final calculation**: Sums all validated builder payments per day, converted to USD values, and applies the finalize_metric_fees macro to ensure proper schema compliance, data validation, and gap filling with zero values for days without payments. The result represents total daily MEV builder fees paid to Ethereum validators through the Flashbots ecosystem

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

Total value users pay to use a protocol (gross fees, user-paid fees).

Flashbots

Fees

Fees

Competitive landscape