Written by: 0xNatalie
Sorella Labs announced yesterday that it has completed a $7.5 million seed round of financing, led by Paradigm, with other participants including Uniswap Ventures, Bankless Ventures, Robot Ventures and Nascent. Sorella Labs is a crypto startup dedicated to solving the MEV problem in the Ethereum ecosystem.
Core Tools Overview
Sorella Labs is developing two core tools:
Brontes: An open source blockchain analysis tool that processes Ethereum block data, classifies transaction behavior, and identifies MEVs through pattern matching and analysis. It can be seen as an open source Etherscan with custom block analysis capabilities. Brontes is now online and open for use.
Specifically, Brontes can classify transactions according to their specific behaviors, including the initiator, recipient, transaction amount, gas fee, etc. It also converts the original Ethereum blockchain data into a structured, easy-to-analyze format, greatly simplifying the data preprocessing process. In addition, Brontes also combines off-chain data (such as centralized exchange prices, metadata, peer-to-peer data, etc.) to make the analysis more comprehensive and accurate. In order to meet the needs of different users, Brontes provides a modular framework that allows users to create and apply different analysis methods according to their needs. This makes Brontes a highly open tool suitable for complex blockchain data analysis.
Angstrom: A tool designed to reduce common arbitrage practices in decentralized exchanges, planned to be launched as a hook for Uniswap V4. Uniswap V4 introduces some new features including hooks, singleton design (all liquidity pools are managed by one contract), and support for native ETH trading pairs, and is expected to be launched in the second half of this year. In V4, a hook is a customizable smart contract tied to a liquidity pool, allowing developers to execute custom code at specific points in the life cycle of a liquidity pool, thereby implementing complex logic and functionality. As a hook, Angstrom will run two auction mechanisms in each block through Sorella's off-chain network.
First auction: The purpose is to decide which transaction can be processed first in the block. The order of transactions is usually determined by the gas fee and submission time of the transaction, which can be easily exploited by front-runners, who pay higher gas fees to ensure that the transaction is executed before large transactions, thereby taking advantage of the price changes caused by large transactions to profit. Angstrom's first auction is fair bidding, and even if front-runners try to insert their transactions, they need to compete for priority through the auction mechanism. In this way, attackers can no longer ensure that their transactions are processed before large transactions simply by increasing gas fees or submitting transactions quickly.
The second auction is a batch auction where all orders are executed at the same price point, avoiding drastic price fluctuations caused by a single large transaction, thereby preventing sandwich attacks and general arbitrage behavior, further enhancing protection.
Sorella Labs VS Flashbots
Flashbots and Sorella Labs have similar goals, but differ in their specific implementation methods and target users, forming a complementary relationship.
Flashbots focuses on solving the MEV problem at the Ethereum protocol level, aiming to achieve fairer and more transparent MEV extraction by optimizing the operating processes of miners and validators. Flashbots has launched a series of tools such as MEV-Boost, which reduces malicious competition in the network by establishing a standardized MEV auction system, ensuring that miners and validators can extract MEV in a fair environment. These tools not only reduce unfair competition among validators, but also alleviate the negative impact of MEV. The core goal of Flashbots is to improve the overall security and transparency of the Ethereum network while creating a fairer competitive environment for participants.
Sorella Labs focuses on MEV mitigation at the application level, developing tools such as Brontes and Angstrom that act directly on the DeFi application layer, aiming to reduce losses for liquidity providers and improve the quality of transaction execution for users. The core goal of Sorella Labs is to protect the interests of DeFi users by improving the fairness and efficiency of transactions at the application layer.
