MEV-Share primary sources — 2026-05-08

Classification takeaway

MEV-Share is best cataloged as programmable-private order-flow-auction infrastructure. The key mechanism is not just “private transactions,” but a formal interface for selectively revealing transaction information, composing bundles, and attaching refund conditions so that users, wallets, dapps, searchers, builders, and MEV-Share Nodes can split order-flow value differently than in the ordinary public-mempool path.

Primary sources reviewed

1. Flashbots MEV-Share introduction — https://docs.flashbots.net/flashbots-mev-share/introduction

   • Defines MEV-Share as an open-source protocol for users, wallets, and applications to internalize the MEV their transactions create.
   • Says users selectively share data about transactions with searchers who bid to include the transactions in bundles.
   • Says users can choose how the searcher bid is redistributed, including to themselves, validators, or other parties.
   • Describes the MEV-Share Node as the actor that receives user flow, shares selected information with searchers, simulates searcher bundles, and forwards successful bundles to builders with refund conditions.

2. Understanding bundles — https://docs.flashbots.net/flashbots-mev-share/searchers/understanding-bundles

   • Explains the mev_sendBundle structure and shows how MEV-Share extends bundle APIs with privacy settings, nested bundle composition, and post-execution validity / refund checks.
   • The privacy-hints section is the clearest source for how the protocol reprices visibility: hints can reveal only hashes, or progressively more data like logs, calldata, function selectors, and full transaction details.
   • The bundle-composition section is especially important because it shows MEV-Share is not only about protecting one transaction; it is about permitting ordered collaboration and backrunning around partially hidden flow.

3. Protocol README / specs repo — https://raw.githubusercontent.com/flashbots/mev-share/main/README.md

   • States clearly that MEV-Share is an open-source protocol, not a product or company.
   • Frames the project as a standardizable interface for order-flow auctions intended to reduce switching costs, increase competition, and counter proprietary exclusive order flow as a centralizing force.
   • Lists the main participant classes: orderflow providers, searchers, MEV-Share Nodes, and blockspace providers.

4. Bundle spec — https://github.com/flashbots/mev-share/blob/main/specs/bundles/v0.1.md

   • Provides the most concrete technical expression of the mechanism: inclusion windows, nested bodies, refund and refundConfig fields, privacy hints, and builder restrictions.
   • Makes clear that redistribution is not just a social promise; it is encoded into the bundle interface.

5. Flashbots Protect MEV refunds — https://docs.flashbots.net/flashbots-protect/mev-refunds

   • Shows how MEV-Share appears to end users through Protect RPC.
   • Useful because it makes the privacy/refund tradeoff tangible: users can share only hash-level data for maximum privacy or share more hints for better expected refunds.
   • Confirms that MEV-Share is infrastructure beneath a wallet-facing product surface rather than a purely theoretical spec.

Whitepaper / technical-doc status

• No canonical standalone whitepaper surfaced in this pass.
• The strongest primary materials were the docs introduction, bundle guide, public protocol README/specs, and the Flashbots Protect refund docs.

Why it stays in the active corpus

• Strong comparison class for MEV Blocker, Primev/mev-commit, Atlas, and UniswapX because it isolates a distinct control surface: programmable visibility plus refund-conditioned order-flow auctions.
• Useful for reasoning about where authority concentrates when a system does not eliminate searchers or builders, but instead rewrites the rules about who gets to inspect order flow and how that rent is redistributed.
• Helps distinguish wallet-facing products from the lower-level protocol interfaces that actually structure order-flow markets.