Hey all, hope everyone had a good week! As you may have seen, the mevETH website/frontend is nearing completion—see the link Sam shared above for a sneak peek of the aesthetics. Meanwhile our test validator is now staked and earning rewards, with the remaining validators not far behind in the queue. The smart contract audit is nearing completion, as well, so timelines are syncing up nicely. Won’t be long until we can finally show the world what we’ve been building…

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Hi all, a big milestone this week as we move toward the mevETH launch: We’ve begun depositing the ETH from C.R.E.A.M. to spin up the validators that’ll underpin the protocol:

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We’re doing these deposits in batches and proceeding slowly and deliberately—there’s no reason to rush this step when the value being handled is this high. This is a major milestone on the path to mevETH launch day, and we as a team are proud and gratified about the progress we’ve made—and hugely excited about what’s to come. We’re all thrilled to have everyone on this journey with us. Now who’s ready to watch the deposit queue? ⏳👀

Birth of a new $ETH liquid staking protocol… 💥First deposit for #mevETH just initiated💥 We’ll be proceeding in batches until fully queued ⏳

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crETH2 withdrawals will be available once the entire validator set is staked (no later than this date, potentially sooner depending on liquidity)

#LST is emerging defi that is more than a narrative. It is becoming a critical part of Ethereum infrastructure. Great article:

t.co

Manifold's $mevETH will make a splash into this $17B liquid staking market. Why?

mev-eth.goerli.manifoldx.com

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We’ve been #building critical #Ethereum infrastructure for the last 2 years. With world class engineers and MEV musketeers. More about Manifold's stack: 🧵 (with a little alpha 👀)

#LST liquid $ETH staking is not slowing down - $17B (!) in LSTs and growing. Where will the value flow in the long term? 🤔 With optimized MEV design, omnichain token, and superior defi composability - where will $mevETH TVL be in 6-12 months? #LST #mevETH #LSDfi

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#LST summer is coming, plus the game changing @foldfinance $mevETH launch. 🧵 Learn more about the world's first MEV-centric LST. 💎 We are launching Liquid Staking Token $mevETH with 25,000 staked $ETH from day one. 💎 This launch will finally introduce $mevETH to the public.

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We are excited to share the recent publication of our research paper, "Time to Bribe: Measuring Block Construction Market", a comprehensive analysis of the block builder and proposer landscape on Ethereum. Working collaboratively with @HatforceSec , @lzhou1110 , and @KaihuaQIN , we delved into the intricacies of the PBS ecosystem, and explored its implications on the foundational blockchain structure. Our investigation casts light on topics of vertical integration, essential trust assumptions, and the ongoing struggle against the centralizing tendencies of MEV. We hope, this endeavor helps provide insight into how the dynamics of the PBS ecosystem shape and influence the blockchain space. Find the preprint here:

t.co

$MEV will add value to $CREAM and $FOLD. mevETH will be the only Validator service with its own Relay, Block Building and Node Operations service vertically integrated with restaking capabilities.

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Hi all, this week we’ve been continuing on last week’s tasks: • We’ve continued testing mevETH contracts on testnet and have done a few rounds of refine & redeploy, which will likely continue for another week or so • Our MEV team has begun exploring some second-order strategies that we expect to generate revenue for mevETH down the road: these are strategies that likely won’t be live on launch day but will be added in the following weeks/months as they’re ready. Like I’ve talked about before, one of the things that’s particularly exciting about mevETH is the fact that we’ll be able to continue adding more and more MEV and block-building/block-space strategies over time as we develop them. So the set of strategies that’s live on day one will be smaller than the set that’s live on day 30, day 100, etc. • Our validator team is making good progress on infrastructure and opsec. We’re working with an extremely good security firm to harden our validator infrastructure and I think the collaboration is going to provide a lot of benefits for us • We’ve continued our streak, now two weeks running, of nobody on the team getting hit by a car That’s it for now. Hope everyone has a good weekend! 🐙

Hey all, some key updates from this week: • We launched a number of mevETH-related contracts on testnet and are incrementally testing and fine-tuning them • Some of our first batch of MEV strategies for mevETH that will go live are undergoing testing, and are running smoothly so far • We’re starting to execute our plans on validator infrastructure & opsec, but we’re approaching this with maximal focus on security and safety, so this will take a few weeks Plus lots of incremental progress and improvements, as usual. More to share soon—have a good weekend, all!

crETH2 will be redeemable for mevETH at a rate that reflects the underlying ETH plus accumulated staking rewards

1. You and a few others are asking that withdrawals be opened up prior to, or perhaps simultaneously with, the mevETH launch. I think this partly stems from a misconception about what this would entail from a technical standpoint. Enabling crETH2 holders to claim their underlying ETH plus accrued rewards isn’t like flipping a switch. It requires intensive, careful smart contract development and testing with the same slow, methodical prioritization of security as any other part of a liquid staking system. Contrary to what one might expect, these aren’t “simple” contracts to build, and a single bug or exploit could be catastrophic, so realistically, writing them from scratch, getting them audited, etc., takes a month or two at minimum. This is why Lido and other major staking platforms also haven’t implemented this functionality yet—the difference is that their receipt tokens are holding their pegs reasonably well, so people can swap out at a good exchange rate and thus aren’t feeling “stuck” in stETH. 2. The sort of arrangement you’re describing—where C.R.E.A.M. shuts down its staking services, people claim their ETH, and then each decide whether to manually stake into mevETH—isn’t really a meaningful partnership or collaboration between C.R.E.A.M. and Manifold: It would just be one liquid staking platform shutting down and another starting up, maybe with some joint publicity or something. This isn’t an arrangement that Manifold or its community would be interested in providing incentives for, especially not at the levels we’re planning for crETH2 holders. Remember, Manifold is acquiring C.R.E.A.M.’s ETH staking business, which both teams felt is an extremely attractive path because of (1) Manifold’s ability to design and implement novel, full-stack MEV strategies; (2) the passion, dedication, and enthusiasm with which C.R.E.A.M’s community of defi participants and stakers engage with projects; and (3) C.R.E.A.M.’s intention to focus on other defi products and services that they can innovate in and bring unique value to, which you’ll hear more about in the future. Neither C.R.E.A.M. nor crETH2 holders would be well-served by prioritizing developing withdrawal contracts for a platform they’re sunsetting when they could instead transfer the platform to a partner who can build a much more comprehensive revenue-generating system for stakers, and who will provide robust incentives for those stakers to smooth the transition. 3. It’s absolutely critical that we launch mevETH in as simple a form as possible. As I’ve mentioned in the past, we’re building a new kind of liquid staking system entirely from scratch, and we have extremely ambitious, elaborate plans for building frankly wild things on top of it, which we’ll reveal in stages through the rest of the year and beyond. But for this to work, we need to ensure that the foundations—basic mechanics and accounting for deposits, rewards, price feeds, etc.—be absolutely bullet-proof and rock-solid. We’ll be launching with as few moving parts and as little attack surface as possible, and we’re considering the first weeks of the protocol’s life a critical period for ensuring everything works seamlessly before we begin opening things up and adding functionality. This even applies to things like MEV strategies: we’ll launch with only one or two strategies live, and then add more and more as time goes on. This is not how we’d launch if our aim were to generate maximal hype and get everyone talking about us for a few weeks and then moving on. Rather, this is how we launch a protocol that defines a new class of full-stack MEV, staking, and block-building services, something no one else can do today and that we expect will be one-of-a-kind for a long time.

Hey all, another solid week of mevETH progress. Things are busy over here: • mevETH & staking V2 contracts are continuing to be fine-tuned; there are a few things to be cleaned up and then we’ll head to testnet • We’ve narrowed down our search to a few audit providers we’re excited about • We made some good progress on planning out validator infrastructure and security, and this will accelerate over the next few weeks—this will be one of the last major pieces to fall into place before we launch mevETH • We’ve got the new docs on our existing services just about finished and are eager to share them with everyone (they’ll be on SecureRPC, OpenMEV, etc—mevETH docs won’t be released until close to launch) Have a good weekend, all!

Hi all, was an especially good week for progress on mevETH: • mevETH & FOLD staking V2 contracts are almost ready for testnet • We’ve put together a comprehensive audit strategy and are beginning to coordinate it • We’ve worked out core components of our liquidity strategy with partners • Much of the front-end for mevETH is ready to go—you’ll see more of this soon Looking forward to building on all this next week. Hope everyone else had a good week, as well!

If you missed our Twitter space yesterday you can listen to the recording here

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📣 Introducing… #mevETH The MEV-optimized, natively multichain liquid staking protocol.

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