The Aestus Relay is a neutral, non-censoring implementation of MEV-Boost, connecting Ethereum proof-of-stake validators and block builders via an auction. We emerged from conversations in the EthFinance and EthStaker communities, and aim to provide credibly neutral infrastructure for the Ethereum staking ecosystem.

The relay has been in continuous operation for more than 2 years and serves over 850,000 validators, including many solo stakers, Rocketpool users, and large professional staking operations. Between 1-5% of all Ethereum mainnet blocks pass through Aestus.

Aestus is a public goods infrastructure provider in the staking ecosystem. Our credibly neutral and non-censoring MEV Relay has been in operation for two years.

Research into pre-confirmations and based sequencing aim to provide users significant with improvements in UI/UX and validators with a new source of income, but it creates substantial additional complexity and new trust assumptions. We are actively collaborating with teams in this space with an aim to provide these services to the ethereum community.

MEV remains a valuable part of revenue for Ethereum PoS consensus participants. It is critical to the long-term health of the network that we minimize centralization pressures by ensuring opportunity and profits are equitably distributed amongst all validators.

Our relay was originally imagined as a short-term enterprise destined only to fill a short-term gap between the Merge and the development of enshrined proposer-builder separation (“ePBS”). This pathway to an in-protocol solution has been significantly more challenging than initially anticipated and remains somewhat elusive. Aestus intends to remain in operation until we outlive our purpose.

Recently, there has been considerable interest and extensive research towards improving Ethereum UI/UX by supporting cross-chain (L2) atomic synchronicity, including instantaneous inclusion and execution guarantees (preconfs) using L1 validators to secure L2s.

Aestus operates as a public good, free from commercial interests and adhering to principles of credible neutrality.

Censorship resistant: No transactions are censored or filtered.
Non-judgmental: No specific MEV searcher strategies are promoted or excluded.
Unbiased: No exclusive relationships are made with builders and searchers.
Open source: We publish our config and code on GitHub.

Public Goods Funded

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