Infrastructure project Flashbots is in talks with investors to raise $30 million to $50 million at a valuation of $1 billion, The Block reports, citing its own sources.
According to the publication, the startup has not applied to venture capitalists, as it usually does. On the contrary, the project is awaiting proposals from them.
Paradigm has agreed to lead the round. According to Crunchbase, the firm was Flashbots’ lead seed-stage investor in 2020.
The startup is developing solutions to democratize access to maximum extractable value (MEV) opportunities and protect against misuse of this Ethereum network option.
The project’s infrastructure includes:
- Flashbots Auction – a marketplace for transaction auctions;
- MEV-Boost – an out-of-protocol implementation of Proposer-Builder Separation (PBS) technology;
- Flashbots Protect – an RPC endpoint to protect against frontrunners and failed transactions;
- Flashbots Data – tools and dashboards to increase the transparency of MEV activity.
According to mevboost.org, about 75% of Ethereum blocks are transacted using MEV-Boost.
In October 2022, Flashbots director of strategy Hasu called the lack of a neutral relay on the network a “failure” of the ecosystem of the second most capitalized cryptocurrency.
As a reminder, in November 2022, Ethereum’s co-founder presented an updated roadmap for the project, which included The Scourge phase designed to solve the MEV problem.