Documenting Repeated Game MEV Bidding Dynamics in Sealed Bid Auction

Competition for the extraction of MEV opportunities and their public nature provides a rich mound of empirical data on repeated auctions. Many searchers (i.e. bidders) report using dynamic bidding strategies to balance short term competitiveness with with the long term sustainability. For example, for common value opportunities like atomic arbitrage, a searcher may increase their bid in auction round whenever was lost, but then decreasing their bid whenever an auction is won in order to avoid winning bids creeping up to 100% of the opportunity value. Griefing strategies are also a common feature of these emergent equilibria. Thus far, no systematic documentation or detailed modeling of these behaviours has been done since the Flashboys 2.0 paper despite substantial changes to the competitive landscape.