On Thursday, Flare introduced a governance proposal that could make it a pioneer among layer-1 blockchains in capturing maximal extractable value (MEV) at the protocol level, rather than allowing it to benefit a limited number of specialized actors who profit from transaction ordering on major chains. MEV refers to the revenue that block builders generate by reordering, inserting, or censoring transactions within a block.
Typically, this value is captured by external searchers and builders, who impose a hidden tax on regular users through front-running, sandwich attacks, and arbitrage. According to external estimates, annual MEV revenues range from tens of millions on networks like Arbitrum to $500 million on Ethereum and up to $1 billion on Solana. Flare's proposal involves a three-stage process that would redirect these revenues into the protocol's token economy. 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 to 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 introduces 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. Several changes would take effect immediately after approval, including a reduction in annual FLR inflation from 5% to 3%, with the hard cap cut from 5 billion to 3 billion tokens per year. A 20-fold increase in 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.
Even with the increase, a standard Flare transaction would cost 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 and is designed 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.