In a recent governance proposal, Flare has outlined a plan to become one of the first layer-1 blockchains to capture maximal extractable value (MEV) at the protocol level. This move would redirect the revenue generated by MEV away from a small group of specialized actors and into the protocol's token economy.

MEV refers to the revenue extracted by block builders through the reordering, insertion, or censorship of transactions within a block. Currently, this value is primarily captured by external searchers and builders, who impose 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 certain networks, with some blockchains generating upwards of $500 million to $1 billion. The proposed three-stage plan would route this revenue into Flare's token economics.

Initially, block building would be transferred from individual validators to a designated builder operated by the Flare Entity, with a fallback to the current model if the builder becomes unavailable. The second stage would involve moving block building into Flare Confidential Compute, making the process publicly auditable. The final stage would merge the builder and proposer into a single entity, shifting the existing validators to a verification role. Additionally, the proposal introduces FIRE, the Flare Income Reinvestment Entity, which would 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. If approved, several changes would take effect immediately, 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. The base gas fee would also increase 20-fold, from 60 gwei to 1,200 gwei, resulting in an estimated annual FLR burn of 300 million at current transaction volumes.

Despite 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 token supply to XRP holders through an airdrop 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.