Securerpc Relay – Grant Request for Operational Expenses

Community Grants / Initiatives
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SecureRPC Relay Grant Request

Securerpc is a robust, non-censoring relay service operated by Manifold Finance. Since our inception, we have been committed to providing a secure infrastructure that allows validators to safely manage their transaction flows while upholding decentralisation and censorship resistance.

Our relay is a critical component of the blockchain ecosystem, ensuring that validators can optimize returns without compromising on security or neutrality. By supporting millions of requests each day and facilitating seamless interactions across both L1 and L2 networks, Securerpc contributes significantly to the overall health and resilience of the Ethereum (and Lido’s) infrastructure.

Key Operating Information

• Approximately 700,000 validators – are connected to Securerpc.

• We are one of the original relays to start at The Merge

• Maximally non-censoring relay.

• Insurance has paid out Lido when incidents have happened.

• Dedicated developer and testnet environments are maintained to support continuous integration and upcoming network enhancements.

• Our block builder sends all proceeds to the validator fee recipient, ensuring censored transactions get a chance for inclusion regardless of builder policies.

The Future

Recent months have seen substantial R&D into instantaneous transaction confirmations and advanced relay architectures that promise to elevate user experience and cross-layer interoperability. Emerging protocols and initiatives are placing novel and complex demands on neutral infrastructure providers, and while uncertainty remains about the definitive path forward, Securerpc is prepared to evolve alongside these innovations.

At the same time, the current economic model for relay operations has not afforded us a sustainable revenue stream. Direct monetization—such as service fees—could undermine our core principles of neutrality and security. Consequently, Securerpc has thus far been sustained by internal support solely Manifold Finance. Requests for funding from other organizations have been rejected without substantive reasoning. To ensure our ongoing and future development needs, it is imperative that we ecosystem users contribute to our funding needs.

We are dedicated to collaborating with projects that emphasize decentralisation, security, and censorship resistance. Our focus is on fostering an ecosystem where innovation is encouraged and operational integrity is maintained for the benefit of all stakeholders.

Funding Request

As part of this funding initiative, we are formally requesting a grant of $120,000. These funds will be allocated entirely to covering our operational costs and supporting further development initiatives aimed at enhancing network performance and resilience. This will include:

Should this proposal be approved, our recipient address is manifoldfinance.eth

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I agree that the relay situation in Ethereum, where three relays build around 97-98% of blocks, is leaving something to be desired. That said, this problem cannot be addressed by throwing more money into the black hole that has been public goods relay funding, when these “public goods relays” have effectively zero actual usage at this point. I would also include the Flashbots relay in this.

For reference, I checked the last 1.5 months of relay data, and put together some stats:

Unique blocks

  • you delivered 20 unique blocks, 0.007% of all slots in that period. For those not deeply familiar with the relay auction, this metric shows the blocks where Manifold relay provided some benefit over other relays, be it speed or extra profit.
  • these unique blocks were worth 0.35 ETH or about $1k (at ETH=$2,800). This comes to about 3.4 ETH or $9k annualized.

All blocks

  • you delivered 120 blocks including non-uniques (i.e. ones first published by other relays), 0.04% of all slots in that period.
  • the value of these blocks is 42 ETH or $119k annualized.

Value for Lido

  • assuming your unique blocks are 10% more valuable than the next, and Lido has 28% marketshare, the extra revenue Manifold relay provides to LidoDAO is about $250. After 5% take rate, we’re talking about (literally) $12.50 here.
  • and as I said, there isn’t much diversification for Ethereum when a relay produces 0.04% of slots, of which only a tiny amount is unique.

I think Lido should reject this funding request, and you should probably reconsider if it makes sense to run a relay as a public good anymore. At Flashbots we’re in a similar position so I have a lot of sympathy, but speaking in the interest of Lido, I can’t recommend spending any further $ of relay funding. If, for example, censorship resistance is the goal, there are much higher ROI bets.

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The relay was removed from must include to optional. This occured because of an exploit in which we covered and made hole Lido validators. When the Flashbots experienced an exploit no such change was made to the relay status. Bloxroute has also seen outages costing validators money and no change in their status was seen.

We have developed a new auction mechanism that outperforms Flashbots MEV Boost solely, so I am sure that is a much higher ROI bet Lido can make as well, you can read more here: Yield (+,+): the new yield scaling curve for restaking - AVS Research - EigenLayer Forum

Additionally, working on Blob performance we have a proposal regarding leveraging the relay to help add additional support for blob propagation and syncing: The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Relay-Based DAS - Networking - Ethereum Research

I don’t see how having less relays provides for more decentralization.

Your calculation is incorrect, you are comparing unique blocks of all slots in a period, it should be in blocks in which we had access to when compared to other relays, as other relays may have access to slots in which the validator is not registered with us. So this number is underreporting in reality.

1.5 months is the exactly the period in which the relay did not operate the new XGA Auction system, so there that too. I would imagine seeing an additional 1.7% APY to Staking would be of considerable value to Lido, no?

Danke.

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Sorry for the late response here, this grant request was deliberated for a lengthy period in LEGO.

Just want to add that the separate SecureRPC request to be moved to the “must use some” relay list is currently being reviewed by the RMC and is in the final stages of receiving the necessary sign-offs (so far all indications point to the request being approved) cc @sven.

Back to the topic at hand: the grant request is larger than the LEGO council can approve, which means that it would need to go to a DAO vote, potentially with LEGO support for the vote in favor, but LEGO does not feel that it can support a grant request of this size for this purpose at this time. A smaller grant amount could be considered, but as a part of the deliberation two chief considerations and topics discussed pointed towards this not being a recommended course.

At this time, the LEGO council does not see it fit to support this grant request, for two chief reasons:

  • The grant request seems outsized based on the current usage of the SecureRPC relay in the Lido validator set, and given current market conditions
  • A similar grant request was made to another relay operator in the past (Aestus), for a much smaller amount which was approved, but it’s not clear if this “lifeline” has resulted in any material change to the sustainability of the relay operation, which would basically entail that the relay would just stop operating at a later time.

In general it’s very unfortunate that relays need support from the ecosystem in order to sustain operations, and it speaks to structural problems with the current out-of-protocol PBS approach. With regards to the possible use of the XGA auction system, and the possible value that that can bring to the SecureRPC operator and the general ecosystem, that’s something that IMO should be considered as per the proposed APM framework (cc @Gabriella_S).

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