Motion: We should always reduce MEV on blockchains (Ed Felten vs. Tushar Jain)

05/06/22 • 69 min

Guests:
Ed Felten (twitter.com/edfelten)

Tushar Jain (twitter.com/TusharJain_)

Host:
Richard Yan (twitter.com/gentso09)
Today’s motion is “We should always reduce MEV on blockchains."
Generally speaking, MEV or Miner Extractable Value is a way for miners to derive additional revenue by executing transactions based on information in the mem pool. For instance, say a miner notices a transaction in the mem pool waiting to be included in a block. Maybe this is a transaction to buy up some cheap Ethereum. The miner can execute that purchase themselves, at the expense of the trader that placed the original order. And of course, this means value got extracted by the miner, transferred from the original trader. This behavior pattern, of course, applies to both miners and validators. Or to all block producers, to be generic.

The question is, is MEV an inevitability of blockchain systems? Are there ways to reduce it? Are our resources better spent creating systems that reduce as much MEV as possible, or should we acknowledge their existence and try to distribute that MEV more fairly, or at least transparently?

Our two guests today include a layer-2 founder and a VC well-versed in this area. It will be a great discussion.

If you’re into crypto and like to hear two sides of the story, be sure to also check out our previous episodes. We’ve featured some of the best known thinkers in the crypto space.
If you would like to debate or want to nominate someone, please DM me at @blockdebate on Twitter.

Please note that nothing in our podcast should be construed as financial advice.
Source of select items discussed in the debate (and supplemental material):

Guest bios:
Ed Felten is co-founder and chief scientist at Offchain Labs, the inventor of Arbitrum, a layer-2 scaling solution for Ethereum. He was previously a professor of Computer Science at Princeton, and before that the Chief Technologist for the Federal Trade Commission as well as Deputy U.S. Chief Technology Officer at the White House.
Tushar Jain is co-founder and Managing Partner of Multicoin Capital, one of the most successful crypto funds in the last cycle.

Guests:
Ed Felten (twitter.com/edfelten)

Our two guests today include a layer-2 founder and a VC well-versed in this area. It will be a great discussion.

Please note that nothing in our podcast should be construed as financial advice.
Source of select items discussed in the debate (and supplemental material):

Previous Episode

Motion: Web3 is worse than Web2 (Liron Shapira vs. Kyle Samani)

Announcement: I have a new show called “Crypto This Week.” It’s a weekly, five-minute news comedy satire focused on the world of crypto. Check it out on YouTube here: Crypto This Week with Richard YanGuests:
Liron Shapira (twitter.com/liron)
Kyle Samani (twitter.com/kylesamani)

Host:
Richard Yan (twitter.com/gentso09)
Today’s motion is “Web3 is worse than Web2.”

Web3 is a new buzzword that’s generated a lot of excitement, but also a lot of confusion and division. You’ve got plenty of intelligent and reputable individuals on both sides, either advocating it as the future or denouncing it as a delusion.

Here are two succinct ways I have heard Web3 described:

Web1 is read-only. Web2 is read-write. Web3 is read-write-own.

Read-only as in, static pages served by relatively few content publishers. Read-write as in, explosion of user-generated content, think social media. Web3 as in, users do not only contribute content, they also own that content and can port it from web application to web application.

Here’s a second way I have heard Web3 articulated. It was from Li Jin’s Means of Creation podcast:

A mental model for Web3 is a world computer where everyone has access to its data and can change its data.

I think for some of you, these definitions seem refreshingly clear. For others, they only add to the confusion.

In any event - Our two guests today include a Web3 advocate in the form of a successful token fund founder, and a Web3 skeptic who has openly questioned the legitimacy of various claims of this new paradigm. Interestingly, the Web3 skeptic confesses to seeing some value in crypto as a medium of payment and enabler for digital art NFTs.

If you’re into crypto and like to hear two sides of the story, be sure to also check out our previous episodes. We’ve featured some of the best known thinkers in the crypto space.

If you would like to debate or want to nominate someone, please DM me at @blockdebate on Twitter.

Please note that nothing in our podcast should be construed as financial advice.

Source of select items discussed in the debate (and supplemental material):

Liron's skepticism of views from Web3 advocates:
- Chris Dixon's Web3 thread: https://medium.com/bloated-mvp/chris-dixons-crypto-claims-are-logically-flimsy-a26cc8906b3f
- Naval and Dixon's appearance on the Tim Ferriss show: https://medium.com/bloated-mvp/naval-ravikant-and-chris-dixon-didnt-explain-any-web3-use-cases-affc45ec3c60
Multicoin on Helium: https://multicoin.capital/2021/03/17/the-helium-flywheel/
Axie Infinity as potential ponzi scheme: https://medium.com/coinmonks/axie-infinity-gaming-nft-revolution-or-ponzi-scheme-3d81b1647429

Guest bios:
Liron Shapira is a rationalist, entrepreneur and angel investor. He is the CEO of Relationship Hero, a Web2-based relationship coaching service. He has expressed his skepticism of Web3 extensively on social media and on Medium.

Kyle Samani is a cofounder at Multicoin Capital, one of the most successful venture funds this cycle. Kyle is a day-one supporter of Solana, a smart-contract platform optimized for high throughput

Next Episode

Motion: Bitcoin mining is good for the grid (Lee Bratcher vs. Ben Hertz-Shargel)

Guests:
Lee Bratcher (twitter.com/lee_bratcher)
Ben Hertz-Shargel (twitter.com/benhertzshargel)

Host:
Richard Yan (twitter.com/gentso09)
Today’s motion is “Bitcoin mining is good for the grid.”

Bitcoin advocates think bitcoin is a good invention for many reasons, one of which is that it makes the power grid more robust. In 2021, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas made the claim that Bitcoin is, and I quote, “a way to strengthen our energy infrastructure.”

But is it? How exactly does bitcoin mining make the grid more robust?

In today’s debate, I wanted to focus more on whether bitcoin is good for the grid, not whether bitcoin is good. So I try to steer the conversation away from whether bitcoin is a societal good, independent of its impact on the electric grid.

One of our guests today is a researcher in the subject matter of electric power grids. The other guest runs a trade group that tries to advocate for bitcoin and crypto industries in the state of Texas.

If you’re into crypto and like to hear two sides of the story, be sure to also check out our previous episodes. We’ve featured some of the best known thinkers in the crypto space.

If you would like to debate or want to nominate someone, please DM me at @blockdebate on Twitter.

Please note that nothing in our podcast should be construed as financial advice.
Source of select items discussed in the debate (and supplemental material):

Guest bios:
Lee Bratcher is the President and Founder of the Texas Blockchain Council. The Texas Blockchain Council is an industry association that seeks to make Texas the jurisdiction of choice for Bitcoin, crypto and blockchain. The TBC helped to research two pieces of blockchain legislation that were passed by the state’s Legislative body signed into effect by state Governor.

Ben Hertz-Shargel is Global Head of Grid Edge at Wood Mackenzie, where he leads research across electrification, distributed energy resources, and demand flexibility. He is a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council Global Energy Center and serves on the external Advisory Committee of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation’s Energy and Environment Program. Ben holds a Ph.D. in Mathematics from UCLA and spent a decade developing demand response technology.

The Blockchain Debate Podcast - Motion: We should always reduce MEV on blockchains (Ed Felten vs. Tushar Jain)

Transcript

INTRO

[00:00:00] Richard: Welcome to another episode of the Blockchain Debate Podcast, where consensus is optional but proof of thought is required. I'm your host Richard Yan.
[00:00:15] Today’s motion is “We should always try to reduce MEV, also known as Miner Extractable Value, on blockchains."

[00:00:23] Generally speaking, MEV or Miner Extractable Value is the way for miners to derive additional revenue by executing transac