In a groundbreaking move, Flare has introduced a governance proposal that would make it a pioneer among layer-1 blockchains in capturing maximal extractable value (MEV) at the protocol level. This approach would redirect the revenue generated by MEV away from a select group of specialized actors and into the protocol's token economy.
MEV refers to the income earned by block builders through the reordering, insertion, or censorship of transactions within a block. Currently, this value is largely absorbed by external searchers and builders, resulting in a hidden tax on ordinary users through front-running, sandwich attacks, and arbitrage.
Estimates suggest that annual MEV revenues can reach tens of millions of dollars on networks like Arbitrum, over $500 million on Ethereum, and up to $1 billion on Solana. Flare's proposal outlines a three-stage plan to integrate MEV revenue into its token economics. The first stage involves transferring block building from individual validators to a designated builder operated by the Flare Entity, with a fallback to the current model if the builder is unavailable. The second stage moves block building into Flare Confidential Compute, making the process publicly auditable.
The third stage merges the builder and proposer into a single entity, shifting existing validators to a verification role. The proposal also establishes FIRE, the Flare Income Reinvestment Entity, which will collect revenue from various protocol sources, including attestation fees, FAsset and Smart Account fees, confidential compute fees, and captured MEV. FIRE's primary objective is to reduce the FLR token supply through open-market buybacks and burns.
Upon approval, several changes would take effect immediately. Annual FLR inflation would decrease to 3% from 5%, with the hard cap reduced to 3 billion tokens per year from 5 billion. A 20-fold increase to the base gas fee, from 60 gwei to 1,200 gwei, would raise the estimated annual FLR burn from approximately 7.5 million to 300 million at current transaction volumes. Notably, even with the increase, a standard Flare transaction would cost only a fraction of a cent.
Flare has strong ties to the XRP ecosystem, having distributed its initial token supply through an airdrop to XRP holders in 2023. Its FAssets system has produced over 150 million FXRP, aiming to bring smart contract functionality to assets on blockchains like XRPL that do not natively support it. As of late March 2026, the network reports over $160 million in total value locked, with more than 887,000 active addresses.