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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etherscan

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Infrastructure

Flashbots

# Flashbots Active users (daily) Methodology

## 1. Overview

The Flashbots user DAU (Daily Active Users) metric measures the number of distinct block builders actively participating in the Flashbots ecosystem on a daily basis. This metric identifies builders through their validator payment transactions on Ethereum, where builders pay validators through fee recipients to have their blocks included in the blockchain. The calculation focuses on infrastructure users (builders) who interact with the Flashbots protocol by submitting blocks and making payments to validators.

## 2. Data sources

- **Ethereum execution layer transactions**: Complete transaction records from the Ethereum mainnet including transaction hash, block number, sender and recipient addresses, transaction value, and input data
- **Ethereum beacon chain blocks**: Beacon chain block records containing block numbers, fee recipient addresses, transaction counts, and extra data fields
- **Ethereum execution layer blocks**: Block-level data from Ethereum's execution layer including block numbers and transaction counts
- **Builder payment transactions**: Specific transactions representing payments from block builders to validators, identified through transaction patterns and recipient matching
- **Contract addresses**: Hardcoded addresses for WETH token contract and ultrasound relay services (Beaver, Rsync, and Titan ultrasound addresses)

## 3. Step-by-step calculation

### Component A: Raw transaction extraction
- **Purpose**: Extract all Ethereum transaction records needed for builder identification
- **Logic**: Collect comprehensive transaction data from Ethereum execution layer including block timestamps, transaction hashes, sender and recipient addresses, transaction values, and transaction indices. Filter for recent data based on incremental processing windows to maintain performance.
- **Key fields**: `block_timestamp`, `block_number`, `transaction_hash`, `value`, `from_address`, `to_address`, `transaction_index`

### Component B: Beacon chain block data
- **Purpose**: Obtain beacon chain block information to identify fee recipients and block structure
- **Logic**: Extract beacon chain block records containing fee recipient addresses, transaction counts, and extra data. This data provides the mapping between blocks and their designated fee recipients.
- **Key fields**: `block_number`, `fee_recipient`, `transaction_count`, `extra_data`

### Component C: Builder payment identification
- **Purpose**: Identify transactions that represent builder payments to validators
- **Logic**: Join execution layer blocks with beacon chain blocks on block number, then join with transaction data to find the last transaction in each block (highest transaction index). Match these transactions with fee recipients to identify builder payments. Apply specific filtering logic: include transactions where the fee recipient equals the transaction sender, or where the sender is one of three predefined ultrasound relay addresses (Beaver, Rsync, or Titan ultrasound relays). Convert transaction values from wei to ETH by dividing by 10^18.
- **Key fields**: `block_timestamp`, `fee_recipient`, `token_address` (set to WETH contract), `fees` (converted to ETH)

### Component D: User classification
- **Purpose**: Classify identified fee recipients as Flashbots builders
- **Logic**: Transform fee recipient addresses into standardized user records with consistent metadata. Assign all identified addresses as 'builder' user type within the 'infrastructure' market sector. Set chain identifier as 'ethereum' and business segment as 'other'. Product ID remains null as this represents general infrastructure usage.
- **Key fields**: `block_timestamp`, `chain`, `user_type`, `market_sector_id`, `business_segment_id`, `product_id`, `user_address`

### Final aggregation
- **Combining components**: The user classification data flows directly into the final DAU calculation without additional joins or combinations
- **Currency conversion**: No currency conversion required as the metric counts users, not monetary values
- **Time aggregation**: Truncate timestamps to daily boundaries using day-level granularity, ensuring each user is counted once per day regardless of multiple transactions
- **Final calculation**: Count distinct user addresses per day, grouping by timestamp (day level), timestamp grain, chain, user type, and product ID. Each unique fee recipient address represents one daily active user in the Flashbots builder ecosystem.

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

Unique revenue-generating users over a fixed 24-hour window.

Flashbots

Active users (daily)

Active users (daily)

Competitive landscape