After Titania Research House

1. Review of the period

We held and spoke at a total of 5 events.

DeFi MeetUp ~ Current Status and Issues of DeFi

Alphaist on stage

Titania Research invited vita and Alphaist to speak at an event hosted by Next Finance Tech in Roppongi, Tokyo, where I discussed the future of the block space and how to organize it, and Alphaist discussed the UniswapX issues and their discussion. Alphaist spoke about UniswapX and his thoughts on it.

Other speakers included Assistant Professor Kawaguchi of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and Mr. Yanai of Next Finance Tech, who spoke about the Profit / Loss of liquidity providers and discussions on AAVE's stablecoin GHO.

Many of the participants were not completely from the crypto field, but were existing finance researchers and IT industry people, and the exchange after the speeches was very meaningful. We are grateful to Mr. Tsuchida and everyone at Next Finance Tech for planning and organizing the event and inviting us.

SUAVE DAY

Adachi explaining sample code

From here, the event was held at the Titania Research house in Akabane, where Adachi gave a workshop on SUAVE at SUAVE DAY, working mainly on the goal of building SUAVE nodes.

As participants, I had the impression that many of us were active globally. Most of the discussions took place in English. SUAVE is a blockchain being developed by Flashbots as the main axis. One of its features is that it is specialized for the MEV use case called MEVM and has an improved version of EVM with pre-compilation. It also has a Confidential Data Store that stores confidential data of applications on SUAVE (L1 transactions, EIP-712 signatures, userOps, private keys, etc).

By combining MEVM and Confidential Data Store, access control to off-chain data that cannot be built on Ethereum, auctions that require private information, and block-built applications that are too expensive to build on-chain, can be achieved with EVM and its EVM and its tools (solidity, foundry, etc.) can be used to develop these applications.

SUAVE has lowered the development hurdles for MEV applications, allowing for the rebuilding of centralized infrastructures such as OFA and block building. As a solution using SUAVE, Titania Research has proposed Frequent Batch Auction on SUAVE to Flashbots. The workshop is being conducted in reference to a previously published article, please refer to that article.

LVR DAY

Alphaist tries to explain using a whiteboard

During LVR DAY, Alphaist gave a session on LVR. I was ill and spent most of the session in a different room, so I cannot share much about the session content or how it went. Because the topic was niche, the number of participants was small.

LVR refers to the difference in performance between a liquidity provider's (LP) portfolio and a portfolio rebalanced according to centralized exchange (CEX) prices. Specifically, it represents the outflow of value from an application due to information asymmetry between informed traders and liquidity providers.

Essentially, it arises from information asymmetry due to blockchain block time, which is also important in assessing an LP's investment strategy and associated risks. At the heart of this phenomenon is arbitrage, which exploits the price differential between DEX and CEX. Solutions discussed include reduced block times, dynamic fees, auction mechanisms to return value to applications such as McAMM, and oracles. For more information, please see this article.

PBS DAY

vita expressing the basic philosophy of PBS

At PBS DAY, I first explained about L1 PBS, followed by a session on L2 PBS from adachi. Participants included people outside the crypto field, such as a doctor and a person who came from Sendai.

L1 PBS is a procedure to reduce heterogeneity of L1 proposers. In this session, we explored how to solve the principal-agent problem by dividing PBS into "market structure" and "allocation mechanism" layers. The former is the contract guarantee mechanism called PEPC, and the latter is the auction mechanism such as Slot Auction, crList, Partial Block, etc. We also touched on discussions within protocols such as two slot PBS and PTC as a roadmap for ePBS.

L2 PBS is slightly different from L1 PBS and refers to a mechanism that separates L2 Block Builder from L2 Block Proposer, which posts L2 blocks to L1. The session will review the basic Rollup mechanism before L2 PBS, and will also cover the various forms of Sequencer that are heavily involved in L2 MEV: Centralized Sequencer, Decentralized Sequencer, He also explained Centralized Sequencer, Decentralized Sequencer, Shared Sequencer, SUAVE, and L1-based Sequencing (Based rollup) as forms of Sequencer that are greatly involved in L2 MEV. He then introduced L2 PBS, which is a combination of SUAVE and Shared Sequencer.

As a solution to the L1 PBS problem, Titania Research has proposed a hybrid auction PBS.

Relay DAY

On Relay DAY, a workshop on relay was given by Aramaki

Most of the participants were Titania Research members and their relatives, and there were no newcomers. But, I think we had a deep discussion from relay to Slot Auction.

Relay is an off-chain marketplace between builders and proposers in the ethereum block building process. Relay has been a free service provided by Flashbots as a public good, and the businesses that operate Relay receive little or no revenue. In fact, last year Blocknative discontinued its relay business for business reasons.

The cost of operating a relay depends on its performance, but in order to get many builders to connect, the following factors may need to be met

Protection against DoS and spam

Minimize latency in sending blocks: multiple servers need to be set up to handle load fluctuations and maintain a high-bandwidth network

Simulation to verify that the block is effective ≈ DA

The cost of meeting these requirements can run into the thousands of dollars per month. Also, with the recent emphasis on Relay as a key to Timing Game, there will be more discussion of Relay in the future. Titania Research is discussing a new type of model called relay-boost, which is in the process of being proposed and will be released in the near future.

2. Accomplishments and reflections

The House

Items Achieved and their Progress

I think we have achieved about 60% of our core goal regarding education and a few more people could have visited the event, and I feel that if I could have put in place measures to encourage more people to come, the level of achievement would have been different.

Although the population of participants was only about 20~30% compared to the previous MEV Tokyo Salon, it was significant because many of the participants had the prerequisite knowledge.

A summary of the sources has also been posted on X. I hope it will be a good opportunity to dive one step deeper into this area.

Reflection and Learning

How do you combine education and discussion?

Our team had two sub-goals: "education" to make as many people as possible aware of MEV, and "discussion" to actually refine our proposals through discussions about what we propose through the event. But, as a matter of course, it is difficult for people who come here to learn to suddenly participate in discussions. In discussing how to create a space that combines education and discussion, we have two points to reflect on.

To increase the number of speakers with expertise

To consider the location of the House.

If there are more speakers with expertise, it will be easier to combine education and discussion because discussions will occur among the speakers. At a workshop in Istanbul led by Yuki from Fenbushi, there were more than 10 speakers.

I remember that there were breaks between pitches, and there was a space next to the session hall where speakers and those who wanted to participate in the sessions were passionately exchanging ideas. I believe that with such a large population of speakers, education and discussion would be compatible, as discussions would occur among the speakers who would educate the audience.

Going back to my reflection on this event, there were no speakers other than Titania members. We wish we had asked the relevant speakers. If any of you reading this article would like to create a space that includes not only education but also discussion about your own projects and research, you may want to consider adding more speakers.

Second, I think it is important to have them stay overnight to facilitate discussion. We have stayed overnight as well, and it was beneficial to be in a state where discussions could be held at a moment's notice. It is important to have a shared house even for a short period of time.

In the future, if you are going to operate a house that includes overnight stays, it is better to aim for a place like ETH Tokyo, where there are many people who do not have houses in Japan, or to use a place like Kusatsu in Gunma Prefecture, where people are forced to stay overnight.

If the event is held in Tokyo, you will be able to go home by train. In particular, in a case like this, where there is no other event, it would have been better to hold the camp in Kusatsu, I regret to say.

3. Introduction of sponsors

We would like to thank our sponsors for opening House this time.

Individual Sponsor: 0x99.eth

Thank you very much to our sponsors.

Finally

I would also love to thank Adachi for suggesting the idea of this House, taking lodging, and procuring other supplies. Without him, without a doubt, this House would not be here. I would also like to thank Alphaist for his overall help in preparing for the event and running the house, Heikyo for his advice on sponsorship, and all those who participated in the event. Last but not least, thank you so much for sharing in the planning, believing in me, and supporting me.