Aestus Relay

Application

Has the relay operator posted in the Call for Relays thread with the information required for application?

1. Is the relay operator publicly available?

Yes

2. Is the relay publicly listed and maintained? If yes, please link to the dashboard/webpage.

Yes (refer to Aestus Relay (Goerli), Aestus Relay (Mainnet))

3. Is the relay open source? If yes, please link to the repository.

https://github.com/aestus-relay/

4. Are there any ethical or non-neutral considerations about the relay to disclose? This includes MEV strategies such as transaction reordering or censorship such as address filtering and sanctions/legal compliance.

https://medium.com/@aestus_relay/introducing-the-aestus-relay-4a36f03acc31

Censorship Resistant

The Aestus relay will never censor or filter transactions

Ethereum block production faces a problem of censorship: currently a majority of blocks are sent through relays that enforce OFAC compliance, threatening the credible neutrality of Ethereum as a whole. We believe it is vital to operate and support relays that oppose censorship.

5. How does the relay source from builders and searchers? (e.g. are they internal, external 3rd parties, publicly open, private, permissioned, permissionless)?

“We're temporarily running a vanilla builder while we onboard more builders. It is permission-less and will remain so. We have a policy of not making any side-channel financial arrangements with searchers or builders.”

6. What is the relay operator’s policy for at-fault technical mishaps which result in missed proposals?

“We're currently self funding this as a public good, so we won't accept financial liability for any technical faults. We hope as the mev ecosystem matures and becomes more resilient a scenario where the relay causes a loss to a validator would be increasingly unlikely to occur.”

7. Do we have all the necessary disclosures and contact information about the relay operator?

Yes

Revenue

1. What is the revenue/profit sharing model (if any) of the relay?

“We're temporarily running a vanilla builder while we onboard more builders. It is permission-less and will remain so. We have a policy of not making any side-channel financial arrangements with searchers or builders.”

“See above. There is no revenue stream.”

https://medium.com/@aestus_relay/introducing-the-aestus-relay-4a36f03acc31

Non-Profit

The Aestus relay will never profit indirectly or directly from MEV

MEV-Boost relays require a high level of trust from both block builders and validators to properly carry out their duties without exploiting their trusted position for personal gain. To help build and support this trust, we commit to running the Aestus relay as a non-profit public good. Operating costs will be funded by contributions from team members and through grants.

2. Is this model transparently disclosed and well understood?

N/A

Testing

1. Does the relay operator have a Goerli testnet relay?

Yes

2. How many days have node operators tested this relay? Has the relay been tested for a minimum of two weeks?

The relay has been tested by a substantial portion of Lido Node Operators on Goerli for > 2 weeks, please see

3. What was the success and failure rate of the relay’s proposed blocks?

No failed blocks were observed during the period.

4. Were there any incident or degraded performance reports from Lido Node Operators while testing the relay? (e.g. missed proposals due to missing/late payloads, validator registration errors, relay timeouts, etc.)

No issues were noted during the performance report period

5. Were observed issues and incidents during testing investigated and resolved sufficiently in a timely manner?

N/A

6. Are there considerations and data to be observed and included from mainnet performance?

Based on relay monitoring and public data sources (e.g. https://www.rated.network/relays?network=mainnet and https://www.mevpanda.com/) no observations would lead a reasonable observer to believe that the relay does not operate well. (note that Aestus was only recent added to both)

7. Has there been a report compiled to analyze the new relay with performance data on testnet and mainnet?

Yes, see

References/attachments (if not included in relay details)

• Follow up questions

• Additional info

Introducing the Aestus Relay

The Aestus MEV-Boost Relay is a neutral, non-censoring block relay for Ethereum proof-of-stake validators and block builders. We provide both Ethereum mainnet and Goerli block relays, available at aestus.live. We welcome all builders, validators, and relay monitors. This document explains our guiding principles and commitment to neutrality.



medium.com