Design to prevent harmful speculation while enabling flexible allocation

Develop a mechanism for allocating and reselling express lane access rights within Arbitrum’s Timeboost that prevents harmful speculation while preserving flexible allocation, so the system remains aligned with goals of reducing spam and speculative manipulation.

Background

Secondary markets have emerged to resell Timeboost express lane rights to searchers. While potentially improving allocation, these markets have exhibited high failure rates and may incentivize speculative or spammy behavior, undermining fairness and reliability.

The authors explicitly flag the need for design safeguards to manage resale and allocation of express lane access, suggesting potential measures (e.g., caps on resale or transparent redistributive rules) to better align incentives with protocol goals.