The Ethereum Foundation declares MEV the main front of the cyberpunk war: a new manifesto from the interim director
Ethereum Foundation (EF) Interim Co-Executive Director Bastian Aue has presented a detailed plan for implementing the foundation's mandate, designating Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) as one of the key existential risks to the network. This document is a logical continuation of recent strategic posts by Vitalik Buterin and Aya Miyaguchi, but now moves from theory to concrete action.
Aue states directly: MEV is not just a market phenomenon, but "the next major front in the cyberpunk war." In his view, combating toxic forms of value extraction should become the primary work of the Ethereum Foundation, not a secondary task of the infrastructure department. A formally open network can imperceptibly turn into an intermediary one if users, at the moment of value transfer, depend on a narrow circle of infrastructure players.
Five Pillars of Vulnerability
In his analysis, Aue identifies five key risks capable of undermining Ethereum's neutrality: privileged access to order flow, cartelization of builders, trusted relays, opaque transaction routing, and validator dependence on a narrow chain of suppliers. Each of these elements, according to the expert's assessment, creates a breach in the architecture of decentralization.
Encrypted Mempools: Panacea or New Trap?
Special attention in the document is given to technical solutions. Aue warns that individual "silver bullets" can create new, even more dangerous risks. For example, encrypted mempools, designed to enhance privacy, could simultaneously shift the advantage to new privileged participants—operators of specialized hardware. Similar caveats are made regarding FOCIL and ePBS: the former strengthens censorship resistance but generates inter-block MEV, the latter reduces reliance on relays but risks cementing suboptimal builder economics.
Aue's key conclusion: targeted combat against individual manifestations of MEV will not solve the problem. Value extraction must be considered a systemic phenomenon requiring a comprehensive approach at the entire protocol level.
Privacy as a Base Layer and Payment in ETH
The second major block of the manifesto is dedicated to privacy. Aue advocates for a model where unconditional confidentiality first becomes available at the base level, with mechanisms for selective disclosure built on top of it. "A public ledger without serious privacy settings by default becomes surveillance infrastructure with settlement guarantees," he emphasizes.
Notably, the foundation intends to transition employee payments and core financial relationships into ETH and "Ethereum-native" stablecoins. This is not a symbolic gesture, but a way to test the infrastructure on themselves—employees must face the same UX, volatility, and privacy issues as ordinary users.
Staking, Spinouts, and Personnel Changes
Staking concentration is also named an infrastructure risk. If the share of stake, liquidity, and governance become concentrated around a small number of issuers, Ethereum's security becomes vulnerable through the economic layer. Regarding spinouts (projects leaving the EF), Aue establishes strict criteria: importance to the mandate, absence of a more suitable organizational base, and minimization of capture risks.
This manifesto appears against the backdrop of major personnel changes: the departure of Co-Executive Directors Tomasz Stańczak and Hsiao-Wei Wang, as well as the launch of the independent R&D lab Ethlabs by former EF researchers, whose focus on MEV fully aligns with the foundation's new direction.
Expert Commentary: Aue's publication is not just an internal document, but a clear signal to the market. The Ethereum Foundation recognizes that the fight against MEV is not a technical nuance, but a matter of the network's survival as a decentralized platform. If the foundation manages to implement the stated approach, we will witness a fundamental restructuring of blockchain economics. However, the key challenge will remain the same: how to implement complex systemic changes without breaking what already works.