Interplay and efficacy of spam‑MEV mitigations across blockchain architectures

Investigate how incentive-based mechanisms that make spam MEV less attractive to send (such as nontrivial minimum gas price floors and charging transactions based on gas limits) and cheap‑path mechanisms that make failed probes cheaper to process (such as sequencer or builder filtering of no‑effect transactions and proof‑carrying cancellation) interact and perform across different blockchain architectures, including Ethereum Layer‑2 rollups and high‑throughput Layer‑1 blockchains, to reduce spam costs without harming legitimate users.

Background

The paper develops a framework for modeling spam MEV on high‑throughput, low‑fee blockchains and analyzes how block capacity, minimum gas prices, and transaction fee mechanisms shape equilibrium spam volumes and their impact on users, validators, and network externalities.

In Section 6, the authors propose two families of mitigations: incentive‑based mechanisms (e.g., minimum fee floors and charging based on reserved gas) and cheap‑path mechanisms (e.g., off‑path filtering of no‑effect transactions and proof‑carrying cancellation). While the paper derives insights and gives guidance for parameter choices, it notes that a general understanding of how these approaches interact and how their performance varies across different blockchain architectures remains unresolved.