‘Massive’ — BuilderNet aims to solve Ethereum’s centralized blockchain problem.

Blockchain infrastructure firm Flashbots has launched BuilderNet, a decentralized block-building network on Ethereum to “kill censorship” and solve the network’s biggest “choke points”.

BuilderNet launched on November 26, which aims to “enable multiple parties to collaborate on building blocks” at a critical time, as 88% of Ethereum blocks have been built by BeaverBuild and Titan Builders in recent weeks.

This is “absolutely huge” because it kills “censorship” and unique order flow agreements on Ethereum, said Victor Bunin, a protocol expert at Coinbase, on X.

Flashbots product manager Shea Katedever wrote on X that the first release of BuilderNet is now live on the Ethereum mainnet and “later” will be available as a drop-in solution for decentralized sequencing on Layer 2s.

Ethereum follows a proponent-developer identification system for building blocks, builders create blocks for evaluation providers, often choosing the most profitable one.

But assigning “special” tasks to certain actors has led to the problem of centralization, Ethereum co-creator Vitalik Buterin emphasized at the end of last month.

According to Flashbots, “By distributing a monolithic block building process across a large network, we can prevent strategic choke points that invite censorship and rent from users.

“Unless we act now, it's very clear that the future of block building will be central.”

Nearly 45% of Ethereum blockchains have imposed censorship to comply with the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) over the past five months, according to MEV Watch data.

Essentially all transactions are included in the following block – but slow block inclusion often gives block developers more time to extract user revenue through sandwich attacks.

How BuilderNet works

BuilderNet operates on a “multioperator” system where multiple parties contribute to block building in a “trusted execution environment” – allowing all protocols and their users to verify transactions.

The maximum withdrawable value (MAV) – usually the maximum amount of value extracted from network validators by re-ordering transactions pending verification – is instead redistributed to users, while developers are paid via a “refund rule”.

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The change could affect Titan Builder, which has reaped more than $40 million in “hidden profits” from MEV-Boost, said Austin King, one of Omni Network's founders.

The first release of BuilderNet is powered by Flashbots, Beaverbuild and Ethereum infrastructure firm Nethermind.

In future releases of Flashbots, he intends to make BuilderNet even more permissionless to further strengthen censorship resistance and decentralization.

Flashbots was initially developing a different decentralized blockchain solution – Single Unifying Auctions for Value Expression, or SUAVE – but a full-scale rollout by 2022 has not materialized.

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