Commit Boost

Introduction

For those not part of the community of Ethereum infrastructure operators, developers, and researchers, how the machine works can seem somewhat Rube-Goldberg-esque, especially the parts of the protocol related to block building and selection. Ethereum is a fascinating case study in the interaction of technical constraints and economic incentives, and how it has evolved to address the complexities and tradeoffs brought by the transaction supply chain, which merits its own long-form post. The transaction journey is a strange land, full of dark forests and myths, of actors looking for profit or fairness.

Today, we interviewed one of its inhabitants, Drew Van der Werff. Previously investing at Brevan Howard Digital and one of the early members of the Digital Assets team at Goldman Sachs, today he is working on Commit Boost (@Commit_Boost) and EthereumFabric (@Fabric_ethereum).

Commit-Boost is a new Ethereum validator sidecar focused on standardizing communication between validators and third-party protocols. Its goal is to return autonomy to Ethereum validators, allowing them to set constraints on block construction and offer new services that improve Ethereum’s most important product: blockspace. Additionally, the project aims to enhance the quality of life and capabilities of validators while addressing key pain points that have emerged over the last few years.

Importantly, Commit-Boost is community-driven, fully open-source, and grant-funded. It is currently utilized by approximately 35% of all Ethereum validators.

Why was Commit Boost created?

Commit-Boost is about increasing autonomy for its validator set. It’s about reducing risks for Ethereum. It is about giving proposers the ability to better serve those consuming Ethereum’s most important product: blockspace. It’s about giving the +1m validators the ability to express their philosophies in the block versus turning over that power to builders. It’s about increasing performance. It’s about continuing to play a key role in supporting Ethereum.

How exactly does commit boost reduce risk for Ethereum?

When Commit-Boost was started, multiple teams were working on sidecars to enable new services such as preconfirmations for Ethereum. Having dozens of sidecars would not be great for Ethereum or node operators. Further, like client diversity, Ethereum had one main sidecar and no diversity. Commit-Boost now has 35% adoption and provides an implementation of the sidecar in Rust, improving the robustness of Ethereum.

What projects or features are being built on top of it?

Currently, the team's main features built on top are preconfirmations, slot auctions, and an out-of-protocol implementation of FOCIL.

What is the core problem Commit-Boost solves that MEV-Boost cannot or will not solve?

MEV-Boost by design takes power and autonomy away from Ethereum’s decentralized proposer set, Commit-Boost returns this. Further, Commit-Boost came with features to enable transparency and operational streamlining that MEV-Boost did not support. Last, MEV-Boost was not written with performance in mind. These features are part of Commit-Boost. I also want to note that many of the features and functionalities were thought of and developed by Ethereum’s validators and the broader community!

What is the philosophical stance of Commit-Boost on protocol ossification vs. experimentation?

This is my personal view: You must keep innovating, or you will become irrelevant. Obviously, you can’t keep changing everything, but as much as possible, we must keep that mindset front and center. For me, the way transactions find blocks and blocks get constructed is top of mind and something we should continue to focus on!

Is Commit-Boost designed to be a neutral standard, a reference implementation, or a competitive product?

Commit-Boost is a public good built by people across Ethereum. It brought together dozens of teams. The core team sustaining it is a non-profit funded by generous grants and time from dozens of teams. With all that in mind, of course we want to compete. It is in my DNA and is something that makes Ethereum better. The ticker is ETH.

What are the key architectural choices you made that differentiate Commit-Boost from MEV-Boost?

We mostly spoke with the end customer (validators / proposers) and reflected on the features they were asking for! This helped us create many features MEV-Boost did not have. One other philosophical difference is we aimed to return autonomy back to Ethereum’s decentralized validator set. Last, Commit-Boost was built with performance in mind. When I began this process, it was shocking to me how much feedback validators had, but how little existing products integrated it.

What are your thoughts on ePBS / EIP-7732? 

Again these are my thoughts…Time will tell, but I think this is a hardfork that is shipping something few will use and shouldn’t have been a priority over other alternative items we could have tackled. I suspect it will have negative impacts on Ethereum block construction, accelerating certain structures in the transaction journey. Beyond that, I hope it achieves what the core devs feel it will enable.

There seems to still be some ongoing discussions about whether all of ePBS will make it into Glamsterdam, especially regarding the trustless aspects. Do you think there is a chance that what gets included will be revised?

No, the core devs made it clear here despite some pushback on the implications of this from market participants.

Can you explain the relationship between based rollups and Commit Boost today? 

Commit-Boost helps enable a key feature for based rollups, preconfirmations. I still think synchronous composability with the L1 is a massive unlock and something that should still be heavily pursued by the Ethereum community.

What is the sustainable funding model for Commit-Boost as a public good?

Commit-Boost is funded through grants that should cover development costs and education for the next few years. At that time, I expect protocol changes will remove the need to run Commit-Boost.

What is the one thing the community misunderstands about Commit-Boost?

A couple of things here:

• What it can enable for Ethereum, including adding key features such as preconfs, inclusion lists, blockspace futures, specific transactions ordering, and many other features. Anyone can build anything on Commit-Boost impacting block construction!
• Why it was created: reduce risk for Ethereum and return power back to the Ethereum +1m validators!
• How much traction it has!

Thank you, Drew, for the answers!