Document Open Access Logo

To Wait or to Probe: Arbitrage Competition on High-Throughput Blockchains

Authors Fei Wu , Burak Öz

PDF

File

Thumbnail PDF
PDF
LIPIcs.AFT.2026.24.pdf
  • Filesize: 1.62 MB
  • 24 pages

Document Identifiers

Related Versions

Subject Classification

ACM Subject Classification
  • Applied computing → Electronic commerce
Keywords
  • Maximal Extractable Value
  • cyclic arbitrage
  • spam
  • Base

Metrics

Abstract

Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) on high-throughput blockchains can be captured through targeted search, where bots identify opportunities off-chain and submit route-committed transactions, or through probabilistic search, where bots submit repeated attempts that discover opportunities during on-chain execution. This distinction has direct implications for spam, blockspace consumption, and protocol revenue. We model how ordering granularity, fee floors, and opportunity-access shocks shape competition between these architectures. Using cyclic arbitrage data on Base from June 2025 to February 2026, we develop a trace-level classifier for search architectures and show that the resulting labels correspond to distinct execution behavior. In our sample, probabilistic search accounts for only 23% of arbitrage activity but produces 95% of spam and consumes 20% of Base gas. We test the model across three episodes: Flashblocks selects against broad on-chain probabilistic scanners; token-launch opportunity shocks temporarily revive probabilistic search; and higher fee floors select against probabilistic bots whose opportunity flow cannot sustain repeated attempts. After Base’s configuration changes, protocol revenue shifts toward successful arbitrages and away from spam, probabilistic bots pay higher priority fees, and spam consumes a smaller share of blockspace.

Cite As Get BibTex

Fei Wu and Burak Öz. To Wait or to Probe: Arbitrage Competition on High-Throughput Blockchains. In 8th Conference on Advances in Financial Technologies (AFT 2026). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 395, pp. 24:1-24:24, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026) https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.AFT.2026.24

Author Details

Fei Wu
  • King’s College London, London, UK
Burak Öz
  • Flashbots, Berlin, Germany

References

  1. AVANTIS. Avantis launch. URL: https://x.com/avantisfi/status/1965415885243556092.
  2. Base. Base flashblocks configurations, 2025. URL: https://docs.base.org/base-chain/network-information/block-building#flashblocks.
  3. Base. Configuration changelog, 2026. URL: https://docs.base.org/base-chain/network-information/configuration-changelog.
  4. Base. Flashblocks Overview. https://docs.base.org/base-chain/flashblocks/overview, 2026. Base Documentation. Accessed: 2026-05-12.
  5. Base. Tweet announcing base minimum fee increase. https://x.com/buildonbase/status/2024306165711327610, 2026.
  6. Eugene Chen and @0xEdgar. MEV on Solana. https://www.umbraresearch.xyz/writings/mev-on-solana, 2023. Umbra Research. Accessed: 2026-05-10.
  7. Philip Daian, Steven Goldfeder, Tyler Kell, Yunqi Li, Xueyuan Zhao, Iddo Bentov, Lorenz Breidenbach, and Ari Juels. Flash boys 2.0: Frontrunning in decentralized exchanges, miner extractable value, and consensus instability. In 2020 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (SP), pages 910-927, 2020. URL: https://doi.org/10.1109/SP40000.2020.00040.
  8. Christof Ferreira Torres, Albin Mamuti, Ben Weintraub, Cristina Nita-Rotaru, and Shweta Shinde. Rolling in the shadows: Analyzing the extraction of mev across layer-2 rollups. In Proceedings of the 2024 on ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security, CCS '24, pages 2591-2605, New York, NY, USA, 2024. Association for Computing Machinery. URL: https://doi.org/10.1145/3658644.3690259.
  9. Flashbots. MEV Protection Overview. https://docs.flashbots.net/flashbots-protect/overview, 2025. Flashbots Documentation. Last updated: 2025-11-04. Accessed: 2026-05-13.
  10. Flashbots. MEV-Share Introduction. https://docs.flashbots.net/flashbots-mev-share/introduction, 2025. Flashbots Documentation. Last updated: 2025-11-04. Accessed: 2026-05-13.
  11. Flashbots and Robert Miller. Mev and the limits of scaling. URL: https://writings.flashbots.net/mev-and-the-limits-of-scaling.
  12. Krzysztof Gogol, Johnnatan Messias, Deborah Miori, Claudio Tessone, and Benjamin Livshits. Cross-rollup mev: Non-atomic arbitrage across l2 blockchains, 2024. URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.02172.
  13. Krzysztof Gogol, Manvir Schneider, and Claudio Tessone. When priority fails: Revert-based mev on fast-finality rollups, 2025. URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.01462.
  14. Lioba Heimbach, Vabuk Pahari, and Eric Schertenleib. Non-Atomic Arbitrage in Decentralized Finance . In 2024 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (SP), pages 3866-3884, Los Alamitos, CA, USA, May 2024. IEEE Computer Society. URL: https://doi.org/10.1109/SP54263.2024.00256.
  15. Quintus Kilbourn. Dealing with spam caused by on-chain searching. https://collective.flashbots.net/t/dealing-with-spam-caused-by-on-chain-searching/3381, 2024. The Flashbots Collective, Research forum post. Accessed: 2026-05-13.
  16. Bruno Mazorra, Christoph Schlegel, and Akaki Mamageishvili. Timing games: Probabilistic backrunning and spam, 2026. URL: https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2602.22032.
  17. Robert McLaughlin, Christopher Kruegel, and Giovanni Vigna. A large scale study of the ethereum arbitrage ecosystem. In 32nd USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security 23), pages 3295-3312, Anaheim, CA, August 2023. USENIX Association. URL: https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity23/presentation/mclaughlin.
  18. Johnnatan Messias and Christof Ferreira Torres. The express lane to spam and centralization: An empirical analysis of arbitrum’s timeboost, 2025. URL: https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2509.22143.
  19. MIRROR. Mirror tokenomics & distribution. URL: https://x.com/blackmirror_xp/status/1964605903824703813.
  20. Alexandre Obadia, Alejo Salles, Lakshman Sankar, Tarun Chitra, Vaibhav Chellani, and Philip Daian. Unity is strength: A formalization of cross-domain maximal extractable value, 2021. URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/2112.01472.
  21. Offchain Labs. A Gentle Introduction: Timeboost. https://docs.arbitrum.io/how-arbitrum-works/timeboost/gentle-introduction, 2026. Last updated: 2026-02-17; Accessed: 2026-05-08.
  22. Optimism. Stake-based priority ordering on OP Mainnet. https://docs.optimism.io/notices/stake-based-priority-ordering, 2026. Accessed: 2026-05-08.
  23. Optimism. The OP Stack. https://docs.optimism.io/op-stack/introduction/op-stack, 2026. Optimism Documentation. Accessed: 2026-05-21.
  24. Osmosis. Protorev. https://docs.osmosis.zone/overview/features/protorev/, 2026. Osmosis Docs. Accessed: 2026-05-13.
  25. Burak Öz, Christof Ferreira Torres, Christoph Schlegel, Bruno Mazorra, Jonas Gebele, Filip Rezabek, and Florian Matthes. Cross-chain arbitrage: The next frontier of mev in decentralized finance. Proc. ACM Meas. Anal. Comput. Syst., 9(3), December 2025. URL: https://doi.org/10.1145/3771566.
  26. Kaihua Qin, Liyi Zhou, Pablo Gamito, Philipp Jovanovic, and Arthur Gervais. An empirical study of defi liquidations: incentives, risks, and instabilities. In Proceedings of the 21st ACM Internet Measurement Conference, IMC '21, pages 336-350, New York, NY, USA, 2021. Association for Computing Machinery. URL: https://doi.org/10.1145/3487552.3487811.
  27. Kaihua Qin, Liyi Zhou, and Arthur Gervais. Quantifying blockchain extractable value: How dark is the forest? In 2022 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (SP), pages 198-214, 2022. URL: https://doi.org/10.1109/SP46214.2022.9833734.
  28. Ozan Solmaz, Lioba Heimbach, Yann Vonlanthen, and Roger Wattenhofer. Optimistic MEV in Ethereum Layer 2s: Why Blockspace Is Always in Demand. In Zeta Avarikioti and Nicolas Christin, editors, 7th Conference on Advances in Financial Technologies (AFT 2025), volume 354 of Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), pages 28:1-28:24, Dagstuhl, Germany, 2025. Schloss Dagstuhl - Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik. URL: https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.AFT.2025.28.
  29. Christof Ferreira Torres, Ramiro Camino, and Radu State. Frontrunner jones and the raiders of the dark forest: An empirical study of frontrunning on the ethereum blockchain. In 30th USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security 21), pages 1343-1359. USENIX Association, August 2021. URL: https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity21/presentation/torres.
  30. Uniswap Labs. Live on Unichain: Fair Transaction Ordering and MEV Protection. https://blog.uniswap.org/rollup-boost-is-live-on-unichain, 2025. Accessed: 2026-05-08.
  31. Qin Wang, Ruiqiang Li, Guangsheng Yu, Vincent Gramoli, and Shiping Chen. Mev in binance builder, 2026. URL: https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2602.15395.
  32. Wenhao Wang, Aditya Saraf, Lioba Heimbach, Kushal Babel, and Fan Zhang. Blockspace under pressure: An analysis of spam mev on high-throughput blockchains, 2026. URL: https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2604.00234.
  33. Ye Wang, Yan Chen, Haotian Wu, Liyi Zhou, Shuiguang Deng, and Roger Wattenhofer. Cyclic arbitrage in decentralized exchanges. In Companion Proceedings of the Web Conference 2022, WWW '22, pages 12-19, New York, NY, USA, 2022. Association for Computing Machinery. URL: https://doi.org/10.1145/3487553.3524201.
  34. Fei Wu, Danning Sui, Thomas Thiery, and Mallesh Pai. Measuring CEX-DEX Extracted Value and Searcher Profitability: The Darkest of the MEV Dark Forest. In Zeta Avarikioti and Nicolas Christin, editors, 7th Conference on Advances in Financial Technologies (AFT 2025), volume 354 of Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), pages 26:1-26:23, Dagstuhl, Germany, 2025. Schloss Dagstuhl - Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik. URL: https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.AFT.2025.26.
  35. Fei Wu and Burak Öz. To wait or to probe: Arbitrage competition on high-throughput blockchains, 2026. URL: https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2606.00720.
  36. Liyi Zhou, Kaihua Qin, Christof Ferreira Torres, Duc V Le, and Arthur Gervais. High-frequency trading on decentralized on-chain exchanges. In 2021 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (SP), pages 428-445, 2021. URL: https://doi.org/10.1109/SP40001.2021.00027.
  37. Brian Z. Zhu, Xin Wan, Ciamac C. Moallemi, Dan Robinson, and Brad Bachu. Quantifying the value of revert protection. In Christina Garman and Pedro Moreno-Sanchez, editors, Financial Cryptography and Data Security, pages 72-88, Cham, 2026. Springer Nature Switzerland. Google Scholar
  38. Burak Öz, Jonas Gebele, Parshant Singh, Filip Rezabek, and Florian Matthes. Playing the mev game on a first-come-first-served blockchain. In 2024 IEEE International Conference on Blockchain and Cryptocurrency (ICBC), pages 220-224, 2024. URL: https://doi.org/10.1109/ICBC59979.2024.10634397.
Any Issues?
X

Feedback on the Current Page

CAPTCHA

Thanks for your feedback!

Feedback submitted to Dagstuhl Publishing

Could not send message

Please try again later or send an E-mail
© 2023-2026 Schloss Dagstuhl – LZI GmbH Schloss Dagstuhl – LZI GmbH About DROPS Imprint Privacy Contact