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MEV in Binance Builder

Qin Wang, Ruiqiang Li, Guangsheng Yu, Vincent Gramoli, Shiping Chen

TL;DR

This study provides the first large-scale empirical analysis of builder-driven MEV on Binance Smart Chain under Binance's PBS, revealing extreme centralization with two builders producing the vast majority of blocks and profits. By reconstructing 1.95 million builder-led arbitrage transactions across hundreds of pools and tokens, the authors show profits concentrate in short, low-hop paths and that the contestable window for MEV is severely limited by a 3-second block interval and whitelisted builders. The work quantifies how private order flow, fast finality, and a small validator set yield strong efficiency and dominance for a few players, while also highlighting censorship risks and asset-level vulnerabilities through stablecoins and wrapped tokens. These findings illuminate structural weaknesses in BSC PBS, offering actionable mitigation strategies and informing the design of future PBS deployments to promote fairer and more contestable MEV markets.

Abstract

We study the builder-driven MEV arbitrage on BNB Smart Chain (BSC). BSC's Proposer--Builder Separation (PBS) adopts a leaner design: only whitelisted builders can participate, blocks are produced at shorter intervals, and private order flow bypasses the public mempool. These features have long raised community concerns over centralization, which we empirically confirm by tracing arbitrage activity of the two dominant builders from May to November 2025. Within months, 48Club and Blockrazor produced over 96\% of blocks and captured about 92\% of MEV profits. We find that profits concentrate in short, low-hop arbitrage routes over wrapped tokens and stablecoins, and that block construction rapidly converges toward monopoly. Beyond concentration alone, our analysis reveals a structural source of inequality: BSC's short block interval and whitelisted PBS collapse the contestable window for MEV competition, amplifying latency advantages and excluding slower builders and searchers. MEV extraction on BSC is not only more centralized than on Ethereum, but also structurally more vulnerable to censorship and weakened fairness.

MEV in Binance Builder

TL;DR

This study provides the first large-scale empirical analysis of builder-driven MEV on Binance Smart Chain under Binance's PBS, revealing extreme centralization with two builders producing the vast majority of blocks and profits. By reconstructing 1.95 million builder-led arbitrage transactions across hundreds of pools and tokens, the authors show profits concentrate in short, low-hop paths and that the contestable window for MEV is severely limited by a 3-second block interval and whitelisted builders. The work quantifies how private order flow, fast finality, and a small validator set yield strong efficiency and dominance for a few players, while also highlighting censorship risks and asset-level vulnerabilities through stablecoins and wrapped tokens. These findings illuminate structural weaknesses in BSC PBS, offering actionable mitigation strategies and informing the design of future PBS deployments to promote fairer and more contestable MEV markets.

Abstract

We study the builder-driven MEV arbitrage on BNB Smart Chain (BSC). BSC's Proposer--Builder Separation (PBS) adopts a leaner design: only whitelisted builders can participate, blocks are produced at shorter intervals, and private order flow bypasses the public mempool. These features have long raised community concerns over centralization, which we empirically confirm by tracing arbitrage activity of the two dominant builders from May to November 2025. Within months, 48Club and Blockrazor produced over 96\% of blocks and captured about 92\% of MEV profits. We find that profits concentrate in short, low-hop arbitrage routes over wrapped tokens and stablecoins, and that block construction rapidly converges toward monopoly. Beyond concentration alone, our analysis reveals a structural source of inequality: BSC's short block interval and whitelisted PBS collapse the contestable window for MEV competition, amplifying latency advantages and excluding slower builders and searchers. MEV extraction on BSC is not only more centralized than on Ethereum, but also structurally more vulnerable to censorship and weakened fairness.
Paper Structure (37 sections, 4 equations, 12 figures, 2 tables, 3 algorithms)

This paper contains 37 sections, 4 equations, 12 figures, 2 tables, 3 algorithms.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Binance's PBS
  3. BSC Design
  4. BSC PBS
  5. How to Arbitrage?
  6. Compared with Existing PBS (Fig.\ref{['fig:pbs_comparison']})
  7. Our Measurement
  8. Data Collection
  9. Active Binance Builders and Their Shares
  10. Building Our Dataset
  11. Arbitrage Identification
  12. Empirical Results
  13. Profits by Token (Fig.\ref{['fig:anova_combined']})
  14. Profits by Builder (Fig.\ref{['fig:chisquare_combined']})
  15. Profits by Proposer (Fig.\ref{['fig:validator_profit_combined']})
  16. ...and 22 more sections

Figures (12)

  • Figure 1: Binance builder activities.
  • Figure 2: Comparison of two PBS workflows.
  • Figure 3: Market share distribution of Binance builders
  • Figure 4: Profitability patterns across token types.
  • Figure 5: MEV profit concentration by builder and token. (a) Absolute profits by token type show that 48Club earns substantially more than Blockrazor in every asset. (b) The heatmap reveals that the main profit hotspot is the 48Club–WBNB combination, with USDT and USD1 as secondary centers. (c) Market-share bars indicate that 48Club captures around 70% of WBNB profit and over 95% of profit in the three stablecoins. (d) On a log scale, Blockrazor’s profits become visible but remain one to two orders of magnitude below 48Club, confirming strong builder concentration.
  • ...and 7 more figures