2026-10-02T22:53:00Z https://drops.dagstuhl.de/oai

oai:drops-oai.dagstuhl.de:27877 2026-10-02T17:40:22Z ddc:004 open_access

RANDAO Manipulation in the Presence of MEV Alpturer, Kaya Hope, Nicholas Weinberg, S. Matthew Proof of Stake Consensus Blockchain Ethereum Randomness manipulation Ethereum’s randomness beacon (RANDAO) is well-known to be manipulable, and prior work [Alpturer and Weinberg, 2024] computes the precise fraction of blocks a strategic proposer can propose. The fraction of blocks proposed, however, is only a proxy for participants' rewards. We propose a generalized reward model capturing many canonical forms of rewards: consensus reward rollover, multi-block MEV, CEX-DEX arbitrage, oracle manipulation, and others. We provide a methodology that computes an ε-optimal strategy for any reward scheme in our model (and in particular, any combination of the above rewards). Finally, we apply our methodology to several canonical examples, and establish the sensitivity of RANDAO manipulation to the underlying rewards. We find that if rewards partially roll over, or scale super-linearly with consecutive blocks, the incentive to manipulate RANDAO is amplified. Lastly, we investigate tail-slot slashing, which can be modeled as a reward function, and show that honest equilibria can be recovered. Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik Kaya Alpturer and Nicholas Hope and S. Matthew Weinberg 2026 Is Part Of LIPIcs, Volume 395, 8th Conference on Advances in Financial Technologies (AFT 2026) InProceedings Text doc-type:ResearchArticle publishedVersion application/pdf doi:10.4230/LIPIcs.AFT.2026.23 urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-278776 https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.AFT.2026.23 eng https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode