key takeaways
- Flashbots is looking to raise between $30 million and $50 million.
- The MEV company is valued at $1 billion.
- Flashbots have recently come under fire for their role in censoring Tornado Cash transactions on Ethereum.
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Lead MEV organization Flashbots is doing a reverse pitch process to raise between $30 million and $50 million. The company has recently come under fire for its role in censoring Ethereum transactions.
$1 billion valuation
Flashbots is changing its business model.
According to a report from The BlockLeading cryptocurrency MEV organization is looking to raise between $30 million and $50 million at a $1 billion valuation.
Interestingly, Flashbots is reportedly conducting a reverse pitch process: Instead of pitching to potential investors, the organization invites investors to do their own pitches, which means they have to convince the company to accept their funds. . Crypto investment fund Paradigm is reportedly leading the investment round; the company was the lead investor in Flashbots in its early-stage fundraising in 2020.
MEV means “Maximum Extractable Value”. The term refers to the arbitrage of on-chain trading opportunities by reordering transactions within a block as it occurs. Flashbots provides an off-chain block building marketplace for on-chain merchants and validators, with the stated goal of optimizing MEV and mitigating its negative impacts on users. According to Flashbots data, MEV has extracted more than $687 million blockchain users as of January 2020.
Flashbots, which has been traded as an Ethereum public good in the past, recently enter into controversy about his willingness to censor Tornado Cash-related transactions on Ethereum to comply with OFAC sanctions. According to MEV ClockAs of this writing, 66% of Ethereum blocks are being produced by MEV-Boost relays that have expressed their intention to censor such transactions; Flashbots are responsible for producing more than 65% of these objectionable blocks. In a sense, the organization’s fundraising efforts mean that investors can be financially rewarded for censoring Ethereum transactions.
Disclaimer: At the time of writing, the author of this article owned BTC, ETH, and various other crypto assets.
