This week, we snagged an interview with Manifold Finance after they announced the upcoming launch of mevETH. Head of BD James sat broke down their new LSD primitive and how it’s different from the rest. We’re excited to see how Manifold blends in their existing tech stack to find higher yields for stakers.
What is Manifold Finance
Manifold Finance is middleware infrastructure that functions as an intermediary between Ethereum users and validators. Manifold’s goal is to own the entire infra stack for collecting, relaying and executing transactions to deliver the highest return on investment (ROI), thus aiding the creation of Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) by functioning as an efficient block builder. They are a key part of the Ethereum network operations, as they sort transactions typically with the goal of building blocks with the highest MEV.
What is MEV?
Advanced on-chain actors known as "searchers" have devised a method to exploit your transactions at your expense, known as Maximal Extractable Value or MEV. This practice involves "frontrunning" and "backrunning," where the searcher puts in an order before you and then profits from any price slippage caused by your trade. Together, both these practices are referred to as a "sandwich attack" and can lead to a considerable loss of funds, running into thousands or even millions of dollars.
What is mevETH?
Currently, Manifold processes transactions through its products OpenMEV and SecureRPC. The former protects users from MEV attacks and takes advantage of MEV opportunities to return funds to users. The latter is open infrastructure for transaction routing and execution.
The missing piece so far has been the validation stage. While Manifold is able to relay and route transactions, block building was left to other services. The addition of mevETH will allow Manifold to own their entire infra stack and use their middleware technology to maximize return across all transactions.
What is the benefit of using Manifold Finance’s middleware?
By using SecureRPC, your transaction is sent to Manifold who builds the highest value block, by discovering which searchers will bid the highest to execute backruns. Manifold runs a MEV market that finds the most optimal and a rebate is paid to the user.
Will mevETH be apart of the WETHR program?
We think so. But it’s too early to tell and we will have to wait for mevETH’s launch.
