In a bold move, Flare has put forth a governance proposal that would make it a pioneer among layer-1 blockchains in capturing maximal extractable value (MEV) at the protocol level, thereby redirecting revenue from specialized actors to the network itself. MEV refers to the income that block builders generate by reordering, inserting, or censoring transactions within a block, essentially imposing a hidden tax on users through practices like front-running and arbitrage. Estimates suggest that MEV revenues reach tens of millions of dollars on certain networks, with Ethereum potentially generating upwards of $500 million and Solana as much as $1 billion annually. Flare's proposal is designed to channel this revenue into its own token economy through a three-stage process.

Initially, block building will transition from individual validators to a designated entity operated by Flare, with the option to revert to the current model if needed. The second stage involves moving block building to Flare Confidential Compute, making the process publicly auditable. The final stage merges the builder and proposer roles into a single entity, with existing validators assuming a verification role.

Furthermore, the proposal introduces FIRE (Flare Income Reinvestment Entity), which will collect revenue from various protocol sources, including fees from attestation, FAsset, Smart Accounts, confidential computing, and captured MEV. FIRE's primary objective is to reduce the supply of FLR tokens through open-market buybacks and burns. Upon approval, several immediate changes would take effect, including a reduction in annual FLR inflation from 5% to 3% and a decrease in the hard cap from 5 billion to 3 billion tokens per year. Additionally, the base gas fee would increase 20-fold, from 60 gwei to 1,200 gwei, which is expected to raise the estimated annual FLR burn from approximately 7.5 million to 300 million at current transaction volumes.

Notably, even with this increase, the cost of a standard Flare transaction would remain a fraction of a cent. Flare has strong ties to the XRP ecosystem, having distributed its initial tokens through an airdrop to XRP holders in 2023. Its FAssets system has successfully brought smart contract functionality to assets on blockchains like XRPL, producing over 150 million FXRP. As of late March 2026, the network reports over $160 million in total value locked, with more than 887,000 active addresses, underscoring its growing presence in the blockchain landscape.