689 Ether, worth nearly $1.3 million, is the largest received since the 691 Ether reward paid to Lido on March 20
The $689 Ether (ETH) reward worth $1.28 million has boosted relay block payments from individual miners on the Ethereum beacon chain with extractable value (MEV), one of the biggest rewards in recent months.
According to transaction data, Ethereum liquidity staking solution Lido was rewarded with block 17007842 on the Beacon Chain — a block completed on April 9 with 47 transactions built by beaverbuild.org.
The reward is almost on par with Lido's latest high of 691 Ether on March 20.
This number caught the attention of Martin Köppelmann, co-founder and CEO of Ethereum-based infrastructure platform Gnosi, who suggested that Ethereum users should use services like MEVBlocker to prevent their transactions from being exploited.
According to MEVBlocker, the MEV bot has squeezed more than $1.38 billion out of Ethereum users trying to transact, provide liquidity, and mint non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
These centralized MEV-boost relays are able to extract value by aggregating blocks from multiple builders in order to choose the one with the highest fee.
One of the most common types of MEV attacks is a "sandwich" attack, which occurs when an attacker makes a large trade on either side of the target transaction, manipulates the price, and profits from the price change.
Related: ETH Staking on Top Exchanges Helps Ethereum Review: Data
The MEV-boost relay stems from the concept of Proposer-Builder Separation (PBS), which was introduced in 2021 by Ethereum research organization Flashbots before Ethereum transitioned to proof-of-stake in September.
Separating the roles of proposer and block builder aims to promote more competition at the consensus level, further decentralize the Ethereum network and strengthen censorship resistance.
However, since the merger took place, Ethereum has encountered several censorship issues with compliance with standards set by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), although the number of compliant blocks has since declined.
According to MEVBoost.org, since the introduction of MEV in 2021, there are currently 10 active repeaters responsible for relaying more than 50% of MEV-boost blocks.