Crypto Firm Flashbots Raises $60M in Paradigm-Led Round

Flashbots has raised $60 million in a Series B round led by crypto-focused investment firm Paradigm, a company spokesperson confirmed to CoinDesk in an email on Tuesday. The raise will fuel the continued development of its maximum extractable value (MEV) network, SUAVE.

Investors in the round were “selected based on their reverse pitches in a beauty contest for decentralization,” according to the spokesperson. No other backers beyond Paradigm were named.

Flashbots is an Ethereum-centric research and development startup that aims to remove the negative impacts of maximal extractable value (MEV), the potential profit that network operators can extract by previewing or re-ordering upcoming blockchain transactions.

The SUAVE (Single Unifying Auction for Value Expression) platform is an independent network that can act as a mempool (essentially a transaction waiting room) and decentralized block builder. Developers can use SUAVE to launch intra-block applications such as block builders or orderflow auctions. Those applications can compete to execute user preferences, creating cheaper and more private transactions than those traditionally found on chains like Ethereum.

Flashbots also builds MEV-boost, a piece of MEV-optimizing middleware used by most of the validators that operate Ethereum.

first reported on the funding round, citing a  with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that showed Flashbots had raised $30,353,089 of a $59,999,919 target. More filings are "expected" to become public soon that would "likely" complete the round, the Block said (an earlier version of its article was more specific and unequivocal, saying that there would be two such filings in coming days for the full amount and citing an unnamed source). The publication said the round carried a $1 billion valuation. A Flashbots spokesperson declined to confirm that figure to CoinDesk.

UPDATE (July 25, 18:17 UTC): Updates sixth paragraph to reflect change in cited news article.

Edited by Sam Kessler.