Bring ETH Back: Preconfirmations & composability

@ssv_networkOct 8, 2025

The Spaces convened Alan (host), Morat Akvin (Primev), Drew Vannerf (Commit Boost/Fabric), and Kevin (ETH Gas) to examine pre-confirmations (pre-cons) in Ethereum: what they are, real-world use cases, market structure, and validator economics. The panel highlighted payments and UX acceleration as immediate use cases, plus crypto-native demand from wallets, L2s, oracles, and searchers seeking predictable, fixed-price blockspace. Pricing is dynamic, influenced by bundle composition, slot timing, and MEV density. Kevin described tradable blockspace commitments (full blocks or slices), secondary markets, and multi-block premiums, while Morat offered a contrarian view: blockspace behaves less like a commodity and more like blackjack, warning that futures and middlemen could harm UX. The group discussed using pre-cons to capture MEV in-protocol, state locks vs state pre-cons, and oracle update products that could be used constructively or adversarially. Synchronous composability across L1/L2 with standardization (Fabric) and validator-side tooling (Commit Boost, encrypted mempools) were seen as key enablers. Validators can earn 5–6 bps above MEV-Boost, with adoption, tooling, and education as the near-term focus. The outlook: broader validator participation, maturing standards, and pre-cons as a path to more efficient block production and user experience.

Twitter Spaces Summary: Pre-confirmations, Markets, and Validator Evolution

Participants and Roles

Alan (Host, SSV Network): Moderated discussion; focused on validator rewards, block production optimization, and synchronous composability across L1/L2.
Murat Akvin (Founder & CEO, Primev): Pre-confirmations pioneer; Primev/MEV Commit; low-latency, privacy-enabled architecture; critical views on blockspace futures; focused on capturing MEV on-chain.
Drew Vannerf (Commit Boost & Fabric; nonprofit in Ethereum protocol infrastructure): Standardizing pre-confirmation pipeline; validator-side tooling; commodity-market framing of blockspace; focus on user UX and validator value capture.
Kevin (Founder, ETH Gas): Blockspace futures initiative; secondary markets and multi-block products; democratizing access for traders/searchers; empirical margins and adoption insights.

What Pre-confirmations Are and Current State

Primev operates a low-latency, privacy-enabled encrypted mempool to deliver fast pre-confirmations and transaction inclusion on Ethereum mainnet.
Primev crossed ~20,000 pre-confirmations last month, with transaction types expanding from ETH transfers to ERC-20 sends and swaps.
Fabric aims to standardize the pre-confirmation pipeline (“one shared pipe”) that validators, relays, and builders can adopt, enabling interoperable pre-confirm features.
Commit Boost is a validator sidecar that lets validators signal and coordinate pre-confirmation offers to relays/builders.

Real-world Use Cases and Why Users Pay

Payments (Murat’s analogy): Similar to Visa/Mastercard authorization flows—instant confirmation at point-of-sale, settlement later. Pre-confirmations supply the crypto-native version: instant assurance without waiting for on-chain finality.
UX improvements: Faster swap confirmations or predictable inclusion when timing matters.
Fixed-price and predictable gas (Drew): Many users prefer not to buy gas “spot” in volatile moments; pre-confs/futures allow buying capacity in advance at a fixed or predictable price.
Target users (Drew): Wallets, retail consumers, L2s, and businesses whose cost models depend heavily on gas; also exchanges/oracle providers that need predictable update windows.
Enterprise scenarios (Alan/Drew): Exchanges (e.g., Coinbase, ByteDance) might buy blocks ahead of high-demand events (TGE, NFT drops) to protect UX and revenue; oracle updates can be pre-scheduled or guaranteed.

Market Structure, Products, and Differentiation of Blockspace

Differentiated blockspace (Drew): Like commodities (oil/gas variations), blockspace is not monolithic; pre-confs are a first unlock enabling differentiated products (full block, top-of-block, end-of-block, specific placements).
Slices of blockspace (Kevin): Products include entire blocks, portions (top/bottom), or particular pre-confirmation placements; everything is tradable for planning and cross-chain strategies.
Secondary markets (Kevin): ~10% of blocks trade in a secondary market; some participants buy/sell blockspace without physical need, acting like volatility hedgers or opportunistic traders.
Multi-block purchasing (Kevin): Consecutive blocks (85–100 block runs observed in a recent month) enable strategies; early data suggests ~25–27% higher value for multi-block packages vs two stand-alone blocks.
Deterministic proposers and forward visibility (Alan/Kevin): As proposer schedules extend visibility (beyond 2 epochs), secondary trading intensifies. Example framing: buying 12 minutes of Ethereum (~$10k cited); options-like views (straddles) emerge as vol markets imply higher values.

Pricing Dynamics and Margins

Premiums fluctuate (Murat): Price depends on:
- Bundle composition: Single-transaction bundles may require higher premiums; multi-tx bundles are more attractive to builders even at market or slight loss because they add block value.
- Slot timing: Early-slot pre-confs may need higher premiums; late-slot (e.g., 11-second pre-confs gaining ~1 second) can be cheaper than equivalent priority fees.
- MEV density: Highly valuable/contested blocks require higher premiums; blocks with more space (and with anticipated gas limit increases like “Susaka”) could reduce fees.
Validator yield impact (Kevin): Pre-confs currently add ~5–6 basis points above MEV-Boost on average; expected to rise with more market participation and multi-block products.

Compatibility and Competition: Pre-confs vs Builders/MEV

Compatibility: Pre-confs operate alongside builders/relays with new communication standards (Commit Boost, Fabric). They offer more nuanced blockspace commitments rather than replacing builders.
Democratization (Kevin): Previously sidelined trading firms can re-enter by buying entire blocks and auctioning portions, broadening builder/searcher competition and access.
Critical view (Murat): Blockspace is more like blackjack than a traditional commodity—best priced in spot. Futures force one side to overpay when events (e.g., NFT drops) are common knowledge; risks of “ticket scalping” with middlemen increasing end-user costs and degrading UX.

MEV: Can Pre-confs Reduce Harm, Capture Value, or Re-align Incentives?

Capturing MEV on-chain (Murat): Today MEV “leaks” via two channels:
- User returns upstream (e.g., order flow auctions/OFA)—good for users but a leak from protocol perspective.
- Payments to builders/searchers and off-chain order-flow generators (e.g., Telegram bots), via side deals.
Goal: Absorb MEV within the Ethereum transaction supply chain, compensating contributors inside protocolized rules instead of off-chain arrangements.
State pre-confs and exclusions (Alan/Murat): Pre-cons could potentially prevent certain state changes; in practice, simpler contract-level state locks (deposit funds and lock) are currently more tractable. Pre-cons remain a potential primitive for more advanced forms.
Oracle update control (Kevin): Products could guarantee oracle updates at top-of-block or defer them—useful for liquidations. But symmetric products (preventing competitor updates) raise network-harm concerns; any design must avoid anti-competitive behavior that harms Ethereum.

Synchronous Composability Across L1/L2 and Future Throughput/Latency

Fabric’s “scope” (Drew): Pre-cons can provide synchronous composability with L1—an unlock for rollups and cross-domain coordination.
Latency vs throughput (Kevin): Real-time pre-confs deliver low latency, while L2s offer massive throughput. Combining both yields dramatic improvements. ETH Gas analysis suggests leading DEXes could see ~8–12x PnL under synchronous composability (article forthcoming).
Network effects of base rollups (Kevin): Liquidity/depth attraction is key—needs incentive design and careful standardization.
Standards and liquidity (Alan): Current ERC-20 standards across rollups are not composability-friendly. Upcoming rollout (next few weeks) targets synchronous composability on major L2s (Base, Arbitrum, etc.) and fixes broken liquidity via better token standards and cross-rollup integration.

Adoption Outlook (6–12 Months) and Prerequisites

Validator and supply-chain adoption (Kevin, Murat): Main bottleneck is adoption across validators, relays, and builders. With single-digit validator participation, wallets/users lack consecutive slots for guaranteed inclusion.
Ecosystem tailwinds (Murat): Shift toward L1 scaling; larger gas limits (e.g., “Susaka”) and lower fees will create more space and interest in pre-confs.
Maturity and tooling: Unlike MEV-Boost (EF- or affiliated push), pre-confs rely on decentralized BD and gradual maturation. Expect tooling, standards, and best practices to improve substantially in the next 6–12 months.
By year-end (Drew): Expect questions to be “what number are we at?” rather than “if adopted.” Historical analogs (compute markets: on-demand vs reserved on AWS) suggest pre-purchased capacity is natural; blockspace is underutilized and pre-confs can help.
Market irrationality awareness (Murat): Markets often move in unexpected ways (e.g., Pokemon cards outperforming in Aug). Best path is building diverse tools and letting market truth unfold.

Validator Role Evolution and Economics

Protect decentralized validator set (Drew): Validators are the tier-1 members of Ethereum’s society. Their economic and operational autonomy must be preserved.
Higher yields signal (Kevin): Pre-confs paying above MEV-Boost should incentivize experimentation—low functional risk and positive expected return (even if modest initially).
Eth treasuries & custodians (Kevin, Alan): Institutional staking treasuries will compete on yield and thought leadership; expect them to be early adopters of cutting-edge validator services in pre-confs and beyond.
Offer more than signing (Drew): With MEV-Boost, validators relinquish block construction rights to “most profitable” builder. Validators can—and should—offer differentiated services and preferences, aligning with their values or higher-paying market segments.
Internal vs external evolution (Alan): Internal—optimize block production for Ethereum’s needs and validator profitability. External—reuse validator identity/infrastructure to power services beyond core protocol (e.g., synchronization primitives for cross-domain operations).

Risks, Ethics, and Network Health Considerations

Scalping and middlemen (Murat): Futures-like markets risk rent extraction, poorer UX, and misaligned incentives.
Anti-competitive control (Kevin): Pre-confs should not facilitate blocking competitor protocol actions (e.g., oracle updates) in ways that harm network integrity.
Education gaps (Murat): Validators often mis-read averages (lottery ticket analogy). Need statistically significant, nuanced analysis to understand incremental value from pre-confs and where it accrues.

Key Metrics and Highlights Mentioned

~20,000 pre-confirmations (Primev) last month; evolving from ETH sends to ERC-20 transfers and swaps.
Validator yield uplift: ~5–6 bps above MEV-Boost currently (ETH Gas data).
Multi-block uplift: ~25–27% vs two individual blocks (early data; more study needed).
Secondary market activity: ~10% of blocks trade on secondary markets.
Consecutive-run availability: 85–100 consecutive blocks observed enabling multi-block purchase strategies.
Options-like framing: 12 minutes of Ethereum cited at ~$10,000; vol markets imply higher fundamental valuations for such windows.

Open Questions and Next Steps

Standardization: Broader adoption of Fabric-like shared pipes and Commit Boost-like signaling must continue.
Validator onboarding: Clear economic cases, low-risk experimentation pathways, and better tooling/UX.
Data transparency: More public metrics and studies on uplift, variance, and reliability to aid validator decision-making.
Composability standards: Rollup-compatible ERC-20 and cross-rollup liquidity mechanisms; deliver upcoming SSV rollout demonstrating synchronous composability with major L2s.
Ethical guardrails: Design pre-confs products that avoid anti-competitive behaviors and ensure net benefits to end users.

Closing Notes

Consensus across speakers: Pre-confirmations are a meaningful primitive to improve UX, predictability, and validator economics, while opening new market designs for blockspace.
Divergence: Murat’s principled critique on commoditization/futures and potential UX harm; Kevin/Drew’s emphasis on differentiated products and secondary markets improving efficiency and stability.
Shared goal: Empower validators, reduce underutilization of blockspace, and align MEV capture within protocolized rules—while cautiously managing market design to protect Ethereum’s integrity.