Flashbots co-founder exits company amid disagreements over the project’s future

Alex Obadia, head of strategic research and one of Flashbots’ co-founders, has left the company, citing differences in the project’s future direction.

1/ after almost 3 years building flashbots, i’ve decided it’s time for me to leave. thanks to my co-founders and the entire flashbots crew for 3 memorable years.

for anyone interested, here’s the message i sent to the team earlier today. pic.twitter.com/MiH7OIRYbF

— alex (@ObadiaAlex) June 20, 2023

In his farewell letter, he thanked the company and employees for “three memorable years.” Obadia also warned the project of upcoming “serious problems.”

According to him, the system Flashbots built to defend remains vulnerable to centralisation due to phenomena such as cross-domain MEV and exclusive-order flow. Moreover, we have become a leading actor, and now we must also protect the network from ourselves, so as not to become the very Moloch we fight against,” said the former head.

Flashbots representatives, in a conversation with CoinDesk, thanked Obadia for his collaboration. They also noted that the company is undergoing broader leadership changes ahead of new funding round.

Over the past six months the firm has hired 13 new team members. Among them Andrew Miller — one of the researchers who hacked the code of Intel’s Software Guard Extensions.

In April, Flashbots unveiled the beta version of the MEV-Share protocol, which distributes “maximally extractable value” among Ethereum users.