The PBS Foundation (PBSF) is a not-for-profit foundation based out of the Cayman Islands. The mission of the Foundation is to spearhead research pertaining to proposer-builder separation (PBS) and to provide infrastructure support for those committed to the ethos underlying PBS. The PBSF will focus on issuing grants that can support a more independent and robust validator ecosystem underlying Ethereum.

The sole focus of the Foundation is issuing granting across the variety of topics pertaining to PBS. We have chosen a few general topics of interest to start and these are likely to evolve over time. Some initial areas of interest include:

• Infrastructure Grants
  • Funding up to 5 independent relays with commitments to proposer-builder separation and the following qualifications
    • Not vertically integrated with any builder or relay
    • Advancing infrastructure resilience and neutrality
    • Additional criteria for the grants selection process may include performance, operational track record, technical capabilities, among other criteria.
• PBS Research Grants
  • Research (and potentially prototype) PBS on L2s
  • Research (and potentially prototype) relay privacy (e.g. SGX-relay)
  • MEV-boost relay economic sustainability proposals
  • MEV-boost Improvement Proposal (MIP) governance proposals
  • Research the design space for improving the MEV-Boost censorship resistance, e.g. exhaustive exploration of trade-offs of inclusion list vs. partial block auctions
• Data Transparency Grant
  • Operate a public good data relay
  • Create a public data dashboard tracking the order flow supply map
  • Research MEV-Boost modification
  • Build a public data dashboard monitoring builders’ strategic bidding behaviors
• PBS Education & Events
  • Improve MEV-Boost documentation, create PBS education material
  • Position paper on Validator Neutrality and PBS

The PBSF was initially dreamt up by Tina Zhen from Flashbots in a forum post shared in September 2023. From the beginning, it was clear that no single existing entity was well positioned to deploy such grants internally. From early conversations with validators, core devs, and long-standing researchers in the space, there was a lot of appetite for a coordinated research on these topics and so multiple individuals and organizations were brought together to help launch the Foundation.

The initial group of funders supporting the PBSF include:

• Coinbase
• Consensys
• Fenbushi Capital
• Flashbots
• Paradigm
• Uniswap Foundation
• Vitalik Buterin

The initial Review Committees include:

• Simon Brown (Research)
• Scott Moore (Research)
• Elias Simos (Infrastructure)
• Alex Stokes (Research)