Ethereum

I designed a new type of MEV-resistant auction with @danrobinson, @0xvanbeethoven, and @karth.

We've been exploring the emerging intersection of auctions, consensus, and MEV.

Our first creation is the Leaderless Auction, a decentralized auction with no auctioneer.

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Creating sustainable on-chain markets 
@Sorellalab 🦀/ Prev: cs/econ @Uchicago


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Auctions are everywhere in crypto. Timing games, last looks, and short-term censorship are on the rise.

Leaderless Auctions are designed to resist them.

We’re exploring how they could be incorporated into Angstrom, Sorella's MEV-resistant trading protocol.

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Leaderless auctions have no leader and no last look, and satisfy two properties:

1. Everyone must submit their bid by a deadline (determined by participants' synchronized clocks).

2. Nobody can cancel their bid without first paying for the option to do so.

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The protocol has several assumptions, like a minimum proportion of honest participants and reliable network conditions.

It takes place in four rounds before being finalized on the Ethereum blockchain, and uses threshold encryption for bid privacy.

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The problem space is very new, and we hope and expect for much better solutions to emerge over time -- maybe as modifications or improvements to Leaderless Auctions, or maybe following a different model entirely.

If you are working on one, we'd love to hear from you!

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You can find the full details here: https://paradigm.xyz/2024/02/leaderless-auctions

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Leaderless Auctions address the “last look” problem that arises when one participant acts after all others.

This problem is common in decentralized auctions today because most run on chains with a block proposer, who can decide their own bid after receiving everyone else's.

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