Flashbots Warns: MEV Bots Are Squeezing Blockchain Scalability In Spite of Network Upgrades

In a recently published research report, leading blockchain R&D organization Flashbots has sounded warnings on the growing threat posed by Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) bots to blockchain scalability. The report states that MEV spam transactions now are consuming blockspace quicker than scaling solutions are able to provide it, effectively constraining the real-world scalability of contemporary blockchain ecosystems.

MEV Bots Soak Up Blockspace Throughout Ethereum and Solana

MEV stands for Maximal Extractable Value, which is the utmost amount of profit validators or sequencers can reap by reordering, adding, or omitting transactions within a block prior to finalization.

The Flashbots report, published on Monday, indicates that MEV bots now account for more than 50% of gas consumed on top OP-Stack rollups, such as Coinbase's Base network, yet earn fewer than 10% of fees for transactions. The bots tend to carry out hundreds of low-margin arbitrage trades, piling up transaction fees for typical users and bogging down network infrastructure.

While it is profitable for the bots, it's inefficient for the network," the report states. "It is costly for users and imposes substantial computational burden.

The problem is worst of all on Base, where two bots account for more than 80% of spam traffic. During the period between November 2024 and February 2025, Base brought an amazing 11 million gas/s throughput equivalent to three Ethereum Mainnets—though almost all of it was absorbed by spam bots, Flashbots reports.

The problem is not unique to Ethereum Layer 2s. The report also mentioned that MEV bots take up roughly 40% of Solana's blockspace, highlighting a wider issue on large blockchain networks.

Scaling Roadblock: Economic Congestion, Not Technical Bandwidth

Flashbots contends that the root bottleneck is not technical in nature—e.g., bandwidth or throughput—but economic congestion, fueled by the "spam auction" nature of current MEV markets. Because private mempools hide pending transactions, bots spam blocks with speculative orders, clogging up the system.

Though technical innovations like database sharding might bring some respite, Flashbots asserts they are not enough on their own to address this new kind of congestion.

Flashbots Proposes Sweeping Redesign of MEV Market Structure

As a solution to the increasing MEV-driven scalability crisis, Flashbots has suggested a two-pronged redesign of the way MEV bids are managed:

Programmable privacy for MEV searchers so that they can examine order flow without achieving undue advantage.

Off-chain bidding platforms for ordering rights so that there is cleaner, more transparent auctioning process.

This system would use trusted-execution environments (TEEs) to avoid frontrunning while still exposing user intent to the validator. Most importantly, the auction fees would be returned to validators and end-users, instead of lost in gas wars.

If executed, Flashbots asserts the protocol could liberate massive amounts of otherwise congested blockspace, minimize transaction fees, and regain scalability for new applications.

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