Feature request: reveal failed bundles

[thegostep]

The current design of the FlashBots alpha uses a sealed be auction which aims to prevent pga type gas wars.

However, it creates information asymmetry between searchers and miners as miners can observe the content of the bundles.

Revealing the failed bundle submissions after a certain number of blocks, for example 100 blocks, would allow searchers to monitor how the bidding process behaved ex-post thus allowing them to identify if miners are miss-behaving.

Note: this breaks the guarantee of 'failed-trade privacy' as defined in the ethresearch post which may lead to accelerated alpha decay.

Issue: flashbots/mev-relay-js#39

[MicahZoltu]

100 blocks is way too many IMO. 10 blocks would be way more than sufficient to avoid reorg attacks in just about all cases.

[thegostep]

I think the main drawback of this proposal is that it accelerates alpha decay, maybe 100 vs 10 has an impact on the ability to copy strategies even without reorg.

[MicahZoltu]

100 vs 10 is insignificant if alpha is what you are trying to protect. There exist opportunities that are rare where alpha may last a 6 months or a year and in that time you'll maybe get 5 opportunities (which may be large). If a FB miner doesn't mine the first one, 100 blocks later your alpha is gone even though you didn't get to leverage it even once.

[jgorfenger]

Could you go more in depth about how searchers could monitor if miners were misbehaving?

And is it really impossible for this to be done in a way that preserves failed trade privacy?

[thegostep]

Sure, the strawman proposal would be for the searcher to submit "bait" transactions to specific miners once this feature is released: #58

The searcher could then exclude miners from all future transactions if missbehavior is identified.

I think it's possible to perform this kind of analysis without revealing the failed transactions, but you have less information at hand.