Builders as Citizens — Standardizing MEV Auctions in Cosmos

Hello Cosmos community! Today, we propose a new standard interface between Cosmos-based chains and builders with the builder module . With our belief that chains are sovereign and should have full control over the shape of blocks and its revenue distribution, MEV has to become an important part of the discussion on the security and sustainability of the Cosmos ecosystem. Multiple solutions have emerged to optimize blocks using off-chain auctions. However, these solutions come with problems that we are addressing with the builder module - read the draft specification . Problems the builder module is going to fix: • Operational risk and complexity for validators because of custom patches to CometBFT(f.k.a. Tendermint) - currently Skip and Mekatek, but potentially others • Preferences aren’t enforced - good or bad MEV - by the state machine • Opaque payments without clear process for determining who should pay what • Inefficient markets created by mutually exclusive implementations Implemented as a Cosmos SDK module it presents a fundamentally different, more decentralized and more effective approach to MEV capture. Enabling chains to express preferences, which are…

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Interesting!

Can you elaborate a bit on how you see this with respect to the direct competition to Skip protocol which is already active on a couple of chains and got funded to develop for this chains?

The builder module is an initiative to bring an open interface to any Cosmos chain for validators to connect to as many builders as they prefer without having to pick a single one. This allows for open competition between builders, resulting in more upside for chians and stakers. With that in mind it’s important to highlight that this is not an exclusive solution, but will benefit cases where teams like Skip run builders.

For cases like ProtoRev/POB like on Osmosis, there is a whole section in the original post up top going into more detail.