Welcome to “The Chopping Block!” – where crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, and Tarun Chitra chop it up about the latest news. This week, Flashbots co-founder Phil Daian joins the show to go deep on what maximal extractable value (MEV) means and how it’s shaping the Ethereum ecosystem. Show highlights: how Phil started working in MEV and why he believes it resembles 'Alice in Wonderland' Phil's definition of MEV and when he realized this was an actual problem how Flashbots was born the story of how Vitalik didn't care about sandwich attacks at the time Uniswap was released whether it's possible to minimize MEV via more competition the never-ending debate about whether MEV should be accepted why Tarun thinks the concept of fair ordering is against nature  how Bitcoin uses social norms to solve its weaknesses  how Google is being called out in court for creating auction to front run its customers how Flashbots worked prior to and after Ethereum's Merge why Flashbots complies with OFAC sanctions  what is the Suave project and how it aims to decentralize Flashbots what the future of MEV looks like Hosts Haseeb Qureshi, managing partner at Dragonfly Capital Tarun Chitra, managing partner at Robot Ventures Tom Schmidt, general partner at Dragonfly Capital Guest: Phil: Twitter Disclosures Links The Block: Flashbots seeks up to $50 million at a billion-dollar valuation CoinDesk: Opinion: Miners, Front-Running-as-a-Service Is Theft CNN: DOJ sues Google over its dominance in online advertising market Unchained: 51% of Ethereum Blocks Are OFAC Censored Given the Sanctions on Tornado Cash, Is Ethereum Censorship Resistant? - Ep. 390 The Cost of Decentralization in 0x and EtherDelta Previous coverage of Unchained on MEV: Why Is Ethereum Trying to Maximize Value From Users? Two Sides Debate Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices