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Open sourcing the Flashbots Relay

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In response to recent developments around legal requirements for relay providers in their home jurisdictions, we have decided to accelerate the release of our relay code as open source.

MEV-Boost is open source middleware for validators to access a competitive block market. Multiple relays at the merge—rather than a single default—is key to Ethereum’s health. Open sourcing our relay code will encourage competition and eschew monopoly and single points of failure.

This is an accelerated release, and has been frontloaded on our roadmap, so please be aware that the relay code is under active development and is subject to significant changes.

We have licensed this code under the AGPL, an aggressive copy-left license that requires derivatives to be developed in the open. We encourage all teams to develop their relays in the open, and for community members to trust relays only if they act consistent with AGPL norms of transparency and free software.

Join us to ensure that a healthy ecosystem of competitive MEV relays flourishes after the merge, before PBS has a chance to be enshrined in L1. This is core to our mission of minimizing MEV-related harms to public blockchains and their users.

This is a call for your contributions and hardening, as a community.