Continuation and Maintenance of ZeroMEV Services

Shutter DAO DAO Proposals
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Proposal Title Author(s) Phase Type Date Created
Continuation and Maintenance of ZeroMEV Services Pmcgoohan (zeromev.org) I Off-Chain 30.07.2024

Continuation and Maintenance of ZeroMEV Services

ZeroMEV seeks $10,000 in additional annual funding to maintain its critical MEV data services for the Ethereum community.

Proposal

ZeroMEV requests $15,000 per year to continue providing essential Miner Extractable Value (MEV) data services to the Ethereum community. With $5,000 already committed by CoW Grants, we are seeking an additional $10,000 to cover the full annual costs. This funding will cover infrastructure and maintenance costs, ensuring the continued operation of the ZeroMEV API, website, and Ethereum nodes.

Key deliverables include:

  1. Maintaining the ZeroMEV API providing MEV summary data for each relevant transaction.
  2. Ensuring the ZeroMEV website remains operational and accessible.
  3. Continuing to run Ethereum nodes that collect transaction data for real-time MEV classification.

The project founder, Pmcgoohan, commits to refactoring the project and publishing it with an open-source license by the end of the 12-month period.

Motivation

ZeroMEV plays a vital role in enhancing transparency around MEV on Ethereum. Without continued funding, the Ethereum community would lose a reliable source of MEV data, potentially hindering research, awareness, and development of MEV mitigation strategies. This project aims to:

  • Promote transparency and awareness of MEV issues.
  • Support research and development in MEV mitigation.
  • Provide reliable data sources for the Ethereum community and related projects.

Many MEV research papers and community discussions on ethresear.ch have cited ZeroMEV, making it important to keep available for the completeness of those citations in addition to availability for future research.

Applicant Background

Pmcgoohan has a 20-year career in developing automated trading systems and has been involved in Ethereum since before the pre-sale. His work includes the EthInclude project and contributions to discussions on MEV and builder centralization. He founded ZeroMEV in 2021 with an Ethereum Foundation grant.

Budget Breakdown

  • Infrastructure/Maintenance: $15,000

Cost Justification

The $15,000 annual budget reflects the actual server costs for running multiple nodes across the globe, collecting data, and hosting the API. While we understand this may seem high, it represents the current operational costs to maintain the service’s global reach and data integrity. By open-sourcing the project, we aim to:

  1. Enable community contributions that could optimize the system.
  2. Potentially find more cost-effective hosting solutions in the future.
  3. Create opportunities for exciting new developments and collaborations.

We appreciate the initial $5,000 contribution from CoW Grants and are actively seeking an additional $10,000 from ecosystem partners to bridge the gap. This approach allows us to maintain this critical service while working towards a more sustainable and community-driven model for the future.

Future Developments and Complementary Grants

While this proposal focuses on maintaining the existing ZeroMEV services, we acknowledge the potential for future enhancements and collaborations. Based on community feedback, we’ve identified several areas for potential expansion:

  1. Aggregate Data Analysis: Currently, ZeroMEV provides per-transaction data. A future project could focus on developing aggregate data analysis tools, offering a more comprehensive view of MEV trends.

  2. Enhanced Transaction Analysis: We recognize the sophistication of tools like Eigenphi Eigentx. A potential collaboration or complementary project could involve enhancing ZeroMEV’s transaction analysis capabilities to provide more detailed insights.

  3. Censorship Monitoring: Expanding ZeroMEV’s scope to include censorship monitoring, similar to censorship.pics and eth.neutralitywatch.com, could provide valuable data on this critical aspect of blockchain operations.

  4. Partnerships and Collaborations: We are open to exploring partnerships with projects like Eigenphi to leverage synergies and create more robust MEV analysis tools.

  5. Open-Source Development: As part of this proposal, we commit to open-sourcing the ZeroMEV project by the end of the 12-month period. This will enable community contributions and potentially lead to more cost-effective hosting solutions in the future.

While these enhancements are beyond the scope of the current proposal, we are actively seeking additional funding and collaborations to pursue these exciting developments. We believe that maintaining the current ZeroMEV services is crucial to ensure continuity of data availability while we work towards these future goals.

Links

Platform

Snapshot

Voting Type

Single choice voting

Voting Options

  1. Yes, fund ZeroMEV for $10,000 per year
  2. No, do not fund ZeroMEV

License

CC0: This work is marked with CC0 1.0 as dedicated to the public domain.

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@middleway - could you link to info on the 5k from CoW Grants?

Also, regarding the open source commitment, would you be open to making that a milestone for releasing the second half of the requested funds?

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The 5k from CoW Grants are committed in principle but are waiting for gathering more commitments to meet the 15k goal - so I don’t have a link to share ATM.

I think it is completely reasonable to make the second half of the payment conditional to delivering all milestones!

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Comments

I am supportive of this grant application.

I recommend that Shutter DAO 0x36 fund a portion (but not all) of the remaining amount. (CoW Grants have committed $5K. Shutter DAO 0x36 could match it. That would leave $5K to be secured from a third source - like Octant, Public Nouns DAO, etc.)

I hope that Shutter DAO 0x36 could receive some awareness / recognition for the grant - on the website or on key visuals. For example: this image which includes “Funded by Cow Grants”: :point_down:

ZeroMEV_CoW
ZeroMEV_CoW1600Ă—900 53.2 KB

Note

I am making these comments in my personal capacity, not as an employee of brainbot gmbh.

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As a side note, ZeroMEV API was fully funded by CoW Grant to the tune of $30k. Therefore CoW Grants received this exposure (only) with regards to ZeroMEV API.

Having said that I fully agree that anyone contributing should get some recognition for it - this is something we can further discuss with PMC, and I’m sure we can find a satisfactory solution.

Then I’d be looking to move this proposal to the voting phase soon with a funding goal of $5k from Shutter DAO.

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As far as this is important for eth ecosys. Why u are not seeking from eth foundation? And I just wonder shutter is building mev infra, any collaboration between zeromev and shutter?

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TBH I don’t know the reasoning but EF have said to PMC they will not continue funding…

This proposal is minimalistic in scope, keep the service running as-is and open source the code. In the section " Future Developments and Complementary Grants" we’ve included some potential future development ideas for after the project is open sourced, based on suggestions we received. But it could very well be different directions that also align with Shutter needs.

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Thank you to all who participated in the recent vote for the ZeroMEV funding proposal. We’re encouraged by the overwhelmingly positive response, with the proposal receiving 28m out of the 30m votes needed to reach quorum, and all votes cast in favor.

Given this strong show of support, we believe that with a bit more community engagement, this proposal could pass. We’re considering re-proposing on Snapshot in the coming days to give the community another chance to weigh in.

Before we do so, we’d greatly appreciate any additional feedback or suggestions from the community. If you have thoughts on how we could improve the proposal or ideas on how to increase engagement, please share them here.

Your input is valuable as we continue our efforts to maintain and improve ZeroMEV’s services for the benefit of the entire Ethereum ecosystem. We’re committed to transparency and are excited about the new chapter ahead for ZeroMEV. Our goal is to transition to an open-source, community-driven model, and your feedback is crucial in shaping this evolution. We’re eager to hear your thoughts on how we can best serve the community’s needs as we move forward with this open and collaborative approach. Thank you again for your support and engagement. We look forward to your thoughts and to potentially re-engaging with the community on this important initiative soon.

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Really appreciate what u done for the eth ecosys. But honestly, I will vote against if u re-post the proposal. Becuase the token price of shutter token perform bad as u can see and still in a down trend. At this moment, I think treasure moeny should all spend to pump shutter itself instead of any external project (CoW is differeent, ther are rich). I would love to see shutter get stronger and have enough money first then I definitly love to support others.

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Thank you for your candid feedback and for sharing your perspective on the proposal. I appreciate your honesty and understand your concerns about Shutter’s token price and the desire to focus resources internally.

I’d like to clarify a couple of points:

  1. CoW is absolutely NOT rich, contrary to what you might think. Like many projects in the ecosystem, they carefully allocate their resources.

  2. I believe the only way for our communities to grow and thrive is to engage in positive-sum initiatives. ZeroMEV is one such initiative that benefits the entire Ethereum ecosystem, including Shutter and its community.

That being said, I value your input and that of all community members. If your sentiment is shared by many others in the community, I will certainly reconsider the intention to re-propose. The goal is to move forward in a way that aligns with the community’s wishes and best interests.

I’m looking forward to hearing more feedback from other community members to get a comprehensive view. Your insights help us understand the community’s priorities and shape our approach accordingly.

Thank you again for engaging in this important discussion.

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I believe the Shutter Treasury is not currently strong enough, nor is the Shutter network mature enough, to support funding external parties. For one thing CoW has a positive cash flow but Shutter does not.

ZeroMEV is awesome work, but I will have to vote against this proposal