Lido, an Ethereum liquid staking solution, received a 689 Ether reward worth $1.28 million from a single Miner Extractable Value (MEV)-boost relay block on the Ethereum Beacon Chain. MEV-boost relays enable centralized extraction of value by aggregating blocks from multiple builders to select the one with the highest fees. One of the most common types of MEV exploits is the "sandwich" attack, where an attacker places a large trade on either side of a target's transaction, manipulating the price and profiting from the price change. MEV-boost relays stem from the concept of Proposer-Builder Separation (PBS), which was introduced by the Ethereum research organization Flashbots in 2021 to further decentralize the Ethereum network and strengthen censorship resistance. However, Ethereum has encountered several censorship issues since The Merge, including compliance with standards laid down by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).

(By BRAYDEN LINDREA)