MEV-Boost Support

[alonmuroch]

MEV-Boost Overview
mev-boost is a middleware connected to the beacon node and provides access to a network of relays and builders that collect transactions into blinded blocks.
The proposer sets a fee address to which he receives MEV rewards.

Currently the setup above is trusted, proposers nee to trust the relay and builders to get paid.
In the future a payment proof is planned.
In the long future the core eth protocol plans an enshrined version of mev-boost.

MEV-Boost support in SSV
There are 2 ways to go about integrating MEV-Boost into SSV. One will support configurability and the other abstraction.

Configurable Support
Operators will define if they are supporting MEV (and which relays) when registering themselves in the SSV contracts. Non MEV and MEV supporting operators could not be on the same validator cluster.

In non MEV supported operators, they will decide to sign a full execution payload struct, enforcing only non MEV blocks.

MEV supported operators will only sign execution payload headers, enforcing only MEV block proposals.

Abstract Support
We abstract away how a block was created and sign directly execution payload headers only which can be supported by both MEV and non-MEV generated blocks.
This solves a lot of complexity in implementation but might open up issues for users strictly wanting MEV/ non MEV

Open Questions

1. Once an MEV block is fully signed, only the proposer can submit it back to the relay? If so can we solve it somehow? Is it worth solving?
2. How to enforce specific relays between operators? Is it a trusted setup?

[alonmuroch]

@moshe-blox @lior-blox