Network Highlight: Radius Secure Block Building

Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) has become a double-edged sword in blockchain ecosystems. While it generates crucial revenue for validators and rollups, it often comes at users' expense through frontrunning, sandwich attacks, and other predatory strategies. Radius has launched the Secure Block Building (SBB) primitive on Symbiotic to fundamentally change this dynamic.

Rethinking MEV Extraction

SBB is an individual component for MEV capture that Radius customizes and integrates for each rollup, minimizing harmful MEV for users. At its core, SBB encrypts user transactions directly in their browser, preventing harmful practices like frontrunning and transaction reordering. When users submit transactions, they receive cryptographic guarantees of how their transaction will be included, with the encryption process taking less than a second and requiring no additional software.

This model transforms MEV from a predatory force into a sustainable revenue stream. Rather than allowing arbitrary actors to extract value through transaction manipulation, SBB creates a controlled environment where beneficial MEV (like arbitrage and liquidations) can be captured while keeping user transactions protected.

Securing Transactions Through Symbiotic

For this system to work, there must be real economic consequences for validators who attempt to manipulate transaction ordering. This is where Symbiotic's shared security infrastructure becomes critical. Through Symbiotic’s vault system, operators use economic security to secure SBB guarantees. If an operator attempts to reorder transactions or break the encryption guarantees, they face automatic slashing penalties enforced by Symbiotic's contracts.

How it Works

The integration with Symbiotic creates a comprehensive security framework for SBB. Validators first register through Symbiotic's operator registry, using staked assets as collateral against potential transaction manipulation. These assets can be slashed if validators violate an SBB component's protection guarantees, creating strong economic incentives for honest behavior. In return, operators who maintain transaction integrity earn additional yield on delegated stake.

This creates a robust economic foundation for SBB's protection mechanisms. Operators are strongly incentivized to maintain transaction integrity, ensuring that users receive the guaranteed ordering and inclusion that SBB components promise.

Impact on the Ecosystem

MEV has emerged as a crucial revenue source for rollups, but capturing it efficiently while protecting users has remained challenging. As a primitive, SBB's deployment on Symbiotic creates sustainable revenue streams for rollups through secure MEV capture while protecting users through encrypted transactions. Perhaps most importantly, it enables operators to earn additional yield while maintaining capital efficiency, aligning incentives across the ecosystem.

Looking Ahead

Radius's deployment demonstrates how Symbiotic's security primitives can secure complex economic mechanisms in blockchain infrastructure. As more networks leverage Symbiotic, the collective security and capital efficiency of the entire ecosystem grows stronger. To learn more about Radius, check out their documentation and follow them on X. 

Stay tuned for more updates as additional networks go live on Symbiotic mainnet. To learn more about building with Symbiotic, reach out to us here.