Proposer-builder separation (PBS) plays a major role in Ethereum's current block-building process. But is PBS a good design? Is it really necessary? A new paper with Maryam Bahrani and @pgarimidi develops the theory necessary for reasoning rigorously about these questions

Head of research at a16z crypto.
Professor, Columbia University.

After doing this research, are there any suggestions?

Humanist, lovepunk, engineer, experience producer, musician, angel. DAOs since ‘16. Experimenting with human protocols, trust networks & decentralized societies

Good question. I view this work more about understanding what's going on than about exploring the design space---arguably the former is a prerequisite for the latter, so hopefully this paper lays the groundwork for other to start exploring

One concrete takeaway: the parameter k (the number of competitive builders) in Section 5 is very important (e.g., with 10 much better than 5), so anything that can be done to keep the block-building market competitive is v important for decentralization

Also: Our model of builder-proposer collusion in Section 5 is very simple, we need a more fine-grained analysis to build more confidence in the conclusion that "PBS works"