Analysts at Flashbots concluded that MEV bots pose a significant obstacle to blockchain scaling, as they consume more than half of the available gas in networks.
This is reported by Finway
The Impact of MEV Bots on Blockchains
According to Flashbots, the so-called spam from MEV bots is not a random occurrence, but rather indicative of a deep problem in the market architecture. In high-performance blockchains such as Base, OP Mainnet, and Solana, transactions that provide no benefit are often recorded, taking up space in blocks and consuming computational power.
“We found that spam bots regularly consume over 50% of the gas but only pay 9-14% of the fees, demonstrating a sixfold gap between resource usage and payment,” the report states.
The cause of this situation lies in the architectural features of blockchains: to profit from MEV opportunities, bots send numerous transactions randomly within a single block where an arbitrage opportunity arises. In private mempools, such as those in Base and Solana, seekers do not have access to current user transactions, forcing them to send hundreds of speculative operations to gain an advantage.
Main Causes and Proposed Solutions
Experts identified four main factors that exacerbate the problem:
- High expressiveness of transactions: MEV bots can create complex programs that react to real-time market changes.
- Private mempools: protect users from frontrunning but hide transaction queue information from seekers.
- Low gas costs: allow thousands of inefficient transactions to be launched in hopes of a profitable opportunity.
- Lack of effective auctions: without a mechanism for ordering, bots simply spend more gas to secure a place in the block.
Flashbots referred to this phenomenon as a “spam auction”—an inefficient market model that overloads networks and prevents full monetization of MEV. For instance, in February 2025, in the Base network, 56% of gas, 26% of available data on Ethereum L1, and 14% of fees were attributed to spam from MEV bots. This leads to increased fees for regular users, raises hardware requirements for nodes, and consumes resources that could be used for application operations.
In response to this issue, Flashbots proposed implementing a new architecture—programmable privacy and specialized MEV auctions. In such a system, seekers could submit private off-chain bids with a guarantee of execution order, but without the risk of frontrunning. Experts believe this should significantly reduce spam volumes, improve scaling efficiency, and lower fees.
“This is not just a series of isolated failures, but a structural defect in the current model. The problem is systemic, large-scale, and requires new institutional solutions,” Flashbots concluded.
It was previously reported that due to a transaction involving an MEV bot, the fee reached 46.07 ETH.