Buterin, Coinbase and more to fund Ethereum decentralization grants

Blockworks exclusive: The PBS Foundation has collected $1 million to fund initiatives related to proposer-builder separation on Ethereum

share

The PBS Foundation is opening applications for an initial $1 million in grants for research and development on Ethereum proposer-builder separation. 

The non-profit’s pilot phase drew support from Coinbase, Consensys, Fenbushi Capital, Flashbots, Paradigm, the Uniswap Foundation and Vitalik Buterin.

Grants will be disbursed by a council. The council includes representatives from Blocknative, Consensys, the Ethereum Foundation and Flashbots, among others. The foundation’s grant lead is Eugene Leventhal from the research group Metagov. 

Read more: For Ethereum rollups, dealing with data remains a bottleneck

First proposed by Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin, proposer-builder separation (PBS) is the concept of separating proposers — which submit transaction bundles to validators on a blockchain — and builders, which organize the transactions in a specific order. 

PBS represents an attempt at decentralization, as the combination of proposing and building gives well-heeled centralized mining pools a competitive advantage. 

PBS first went into effect after Ethereum’s Merge to proof-of-stake. Now, the PBS Foundation aims to promote research and infrastructure to address some of the challenges the concept currently faces.

Notably, MEV-boost relays have become centralized since the Merge. Relayers operate between block builders and validators on maximal extractable value (MEV) boosted transactions, selecting blocks with the highest possible fees. Roughly 90% of transactions in the last 500 epochs, or roughly two days, made use of MEV-boost. Of MEV-boost transactions in the past 24 hours, roughly 97% have been handled by five relayers, according to relayscan. 

Blocknative, once among those top relayers, discontinued its service in September, citing economic viability concerns. Relayers do not currently collect fees. Uri Klarman, CEO of bloXroute, which runs a large relayer, has advocated fee structures outside of public goods funding to incentivize more relayers to join the fray. 

A spokesperson for the PBS Foundation said the grant funding could be used to fund relayers, with a particular emphasis on those who introduce novel designs for relaying. 

The funding will also be focused on community and educational materials, data transparency on Ethereum’s mempool and blocks, and research on how PBS can be improved — or even enshrined — on both the primary network and on layer-2 networks.


Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. Subscribe to the Empire newsletter.

Explore the growing intersection between crypto, macroeconomics, policy and finance with Ben Strack, Casey Wagner and Felix Jauvin. Subscribe to the Forward Guidance newsletter.

Get alpha directly in your inbox with the 0xResearch newsletter — market highlights, charts, degen trade ideas, governance updates, and more.

The Lightspeed newsletter is all things Solana, in your inbox, every day. Subscribe to daily Solana news from Jack Kubinec and Jeff Albus.

Tags

Upcoming Events

Javits Center North | 445 11th Ave

Tues - Thurs, March 18 - 20, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

Brooklyn, NY

TUES - THURS, JUNE 24 - 26, 2025

Permissionless IV serves as the definitive gathering for crypto’s technical founders, developers, and builders to come together and create the future.If you’re ready to shape the future of crypto, Permissionless IV is where it happens.

recent research

Research Report Templates.png

Research

An overview of the Base Ecosystem, with a focus on market leaders.

article-image

Stanford professors David Mazières and Dan Boneh will lead the lab alongside a cohort of graduate student researchers

article-image

With more companies holding BTC, bitcoin yielding strategies could become “a new corporate finance norm,” CoinShares posed

article-image

The proposal comes after Polygon governance considered a controversial use of bridged liquidity for yield

article-image

Can the community balance its decentralized ethos with the need for inclusivity and constructive debate?

article-image

DAWN is positioning itself as a decentralized protocol for gigabit-level internet access

article-image

VanEck Ventures and VanEck’s Digital Assets Alpha Fund invested $2.5 million in DAWN through a strategic funding round, the teams exclusively told Blockworks