Flashbots, a crypto research and development firm focused on maximal extractable value (MEV), has confirmed a series of personnel changes as it works to raise funds at a reported $1 billion valuation. Alex Obadia, one of the earliest employees at Flashbots and a founding steward of the firm, has stepped down for personal reasons. In a statement released on Twitter, Obadia said, “We’ve often had differing opinions within leadership, and that has been part of our strength. However, I believe we will now achieve better results going our separate ways.”
Flashbots builds software to help facilitate the extraction of MEV, and its upcoming SUAVE network aims to extend similar MEV-extracting functionality to other blockchains. The firm is reportedly close to announcing a Series B funding round that will value the firm at $1 billion. A Flashbots representative said, “We’d like to thank Alex Obadia for his amazing contributions to the Flashbots ecosystem and to the crypto industry as a whole, and we look forward to collaborating with him into the future.”
The firm has added 13 team members in the past six months, bringing the total size of the team above 50. Among the company’s highest-profile new hires is Andrew Miller, who joins the team as research lead working on Trusted Execution Environments and SUAVE. Miller is best known as one of the researchers who broke Intel’s SGX code. Flashbots has also added Danning Sui, formerly head of data science at the decentralized finance infrastructure firm 0x, and Daniel Marzec, previously an engineer at Blocknative.
A Flashbots representative said, “We’re now in the latter-renaissance of MEV, and Flashbots is closer towards shipping larger and more detailed specifications for their solution to MEV, called SUAVE.”