Concern: Validators may be selling special treatment and bypassing Bruno burn

[NullQubit]

Take a look at this transaction: 0xc5fff8dfd621b964fabcd9e240d3a6d72927edb5f5195d9d41d6eb0a1859c92a

Things to note:

1. Gas price is 0
2. It is the sell transaction of a front-run operation, so it was prioritized even though gas price is 0.
3. Block was validated by MathWallet
4. There is a BNB transfer going to MathWallet validator (Possibly as payment for the special treatment).

There are many more of these transactions going on to the same contract address with the same behavior. At least 3 validators seem to be involved (MathWallet, TwStaking and NodeReal). The transactions are also not publicly visible from the transaction pool (Possibly they are submitted directly to the validators). Clearly, there is an agreement between the originator of the transactions and the validators and the goal is to perform front-running without risk.

MathWallet denied this, but we can all see what's going on.

Needless to say, because the gas price is 0, there is no burn (Introduced in Bruno upgrade). It's possible that this is another thing these validators are starting to explore to bypass the burn feature and maximize their profits.

Is this behavior allowed from validators? I don't believe that it's healthy for the network if validators do such things for profit. Validators are held to high standards and are supposed to be trustworthy.

For completion, here is also the buy transaction associated with the above sell transaction: 0x762e097ab15fbefeee0e91c6a444e492ec7e9e00c84cad2a4c4765e1f85efe47

[Lucienest]

Flashbots was the worst thing to happen to ETH and MEV. It's a race to the bottom. I read somewhere that Flashbots searchers now keep ~7% of profits on average, with the rest going to miners. The same would happen on BSC, but instead of going to a large set of miners, it will all pretty much go to Binance (assuming the rumors are true that they control most of the validators). That's a real problem in my view. Flashbots has ruined the MEV landscape on ETH for everyone but miners, and now we are going to do that here? Why would you encourage that?

I would encourage it because it's unavoidable. In BSC it's less of a problem compared to ETH, because validators will be in a race to redistribute the MEV profits back to stakers by providing higher staking rewards, and validators who can do this more efficiently will attract more staked BNB. And the most efficient way is to provide an open system via Flashbots where all players can participate. As a result the network will be healthier because all parties participate equally in extracting the MEV, and the value extracted in MEV will be redistributed back to the community.

Are you out of mind? MEV is evil in all sense. Validators only redistributes the block reward and not MEV. Encouraging MEV is outrageous.

[Lucienest]

I don't understand why all are so angry about MEV of validators? Such a behaviour is totally predicatble, teams increase their profit because they can. Protocol doesn't deny such activities. If you want to live with "rules for good people" - go to traditional finances. They do the same things, but under the hood. But if you respect "code is the law" - it's' better to think about good tx ordering markets and solutions, like flashbots do...

Why wouldn't I? after all MEV hurts everyone except the validators, But the topic of this issue is about some validators are selling special treatment.

[zfesd]

FYI & FWIW NodeReal has changed their implementation (or at least their API docs now says) to "Note that only one tx sender is allowed with one bundle". This doesn't solve frontrunning issue, but if they really did implemented such "only one sender per bundle" mechanism, this will solve backrunning and sandwiching. I guess... yay? 🙂

This solves nothing

[realuncle]

I am a developer from Nodereal. As we strive to provide top quality infrastructure for BSC and more blockchain users, NodeReal are researching with some partners on some features that will benefit users with special requirements and help them to use ensure their transaction security and fairness, for example, the https://community.venus.io/t/venus-protocol-weekly-update-w40-2021-shortfall-recovery-report/1890, but not frontrun or MEV. Direct Route is such a product but still in Alpha stage. 0 gas price was a bug overlooked by the engineers, which doesn’t make sense in the economics as no validator will survive without rewarding their delegators and the network. Thank the community for the discovery. Stay tuned for the Direct Route public rollout.

Our service is online after enhancement:

1. Only one tx sender is allowed within one bundle, to protect the user from Sandwich Attack;
2. Set a gas price bar for the transaction within the bundle, the gas fee will still go to Bruno Burn and our delegators.

Feel free to test and feedback.

[noXi89]

I am a developer from Nodereal. As we strive to provide top quality infrastructure for BSC and more blockchain users, NodeReal are researching with some partners on some features that will benefit users with special requirements and help them to use ensure their transaction security and fairness, for example, the https://community.venus.io/t/venus-protocol-weekly-update-w40-2021-shortfall-recovery-report/1890, but not frontrun or MEV. Direct Route is such a product but still in Alpha stage. 0 gas price was a bug overlooked by the engineers, which doesn’t make sense in the economics as no validator will survive without rewarding their delegators and the network. Thank the community for the discovery. Stay tuned for the Direct Route public rollout.

Our service is online after enhancement:

1. Only one tx sender is allowed within one bundle, to protect the user from Sandwich Attack;
2. Set a gas price bar for the transaction within the bundle, the gas fee will still go to Bruno Burn and our delegators.

Feel free to test and feedback.

Could you explain 1. deeper? Sounds like there is now "only" one frontrunning tx per block.

[DreamLxq]

哈哈

[Lucienest]

I am a developer from Nodereal. As we strive to provide top quality infrastructure for BSC and more blockchain users, NodeReal are researching with some partners on some features that will benefit users with special requirements and help them to use ensure their transaction security and fairness, for example, the https://community.venus.io/t/venus-protocol-weekly-update-w40-2021-shortfall-recovery-report/1890, but not frontrun or MEV. Direct Route is such a product but still in Alpha stage. 0 gas price was a bug overlooked by the engineers, which doesn’t make sense in the economics as no validator will survive without rewarding their delegators and the network. Thank the community for the discovery. Stay tuned for the Direct Route public rollout.

Our service is online after enhancement:

1. Only one tx sender is allowed within one bundle, to protect the user from Sandwich Attack;
2. Set a gas price bar for the transaction within the bundle, the gas fee will still go to Bruno Burn and our delegators.

Feel free to test and feedback.

Please put your changelogs somewhere else. Your comments regarding the issue brings no value towards the topic.

[Undead8]

@noXi89 For a sandwich, you must include the transaction of the victim in the bundle to guarantee proper ordering. If the front-runner can only include one sender in the bundle, he cannot include both his transactions and the victim's transaction in the same bundle. That's why it should in theory prevent front-runners to use NodeReal services.

[zfesd]

I am a developer from Nodereal. As we strive to provide top quality infrastructure for BSC and more blockchain users, NodeReal are researching with some partners on some features that will benefit users with special requirements and help them to use ensure their transaction security and fairness, for example, the https://community.venus.io/t/venus-protocol-weekly-update-w40-2021-shortfall-recovery-report/1890, but not frontrun or MEV. Direct Route is such a product but still in Alpha stage. 0 gas price was a bug overlooked by the engineers, which doesn’t make sense in the economics as no validator will survive without rewarding their delegators and the network. Thank the community for the discovery. Stay tuned for the Direct Route public rollout.

Our service is online after enhancement:

1. Only one tx sender is allowed within one bundle, to protect the user from Sandwich Attack;
2. Set a gas price bar for the transaction within the bundle, the gas fee will still go to Bruno Burn and our delegators.

Feel free to test and feedback.

Is it only one NodeReal endpoint user per bundle, or is it limited per txn sender where u can have multiple transactions in the same bundle if they are from different addresses?

[noXi89]

In a bidding scene nothing changes at all.

[DreamLxq]

In a bidding scene nothing changes at all.

验证者始终有优先权.而我们没有嘛....相对来说看起来可能公平点....实际没什么用.哈哈

[DreamLxq]

[DreamLxq]

但是除非是我们的节点有机会能够连接到其他验证者节点,我们就有3/21的机会不被夹三明治......否则,就呵呵了

[Lucienest]

但是除非是我们的节点有机会能够连接到其他验证者节点,我们就有3/21的机会不被夹三明治......否则,就呵呵了

Can you keep it English? Much appreciated..

[zfesd]

The sandwiching continues, now they just use a unique sender for the buy and a unique sender for the sell. @realuncle

https://bscscan.com/address/0x00000000008bef34003b59bed4c4c0f6f1543928

[noXi89]

Facts have proved that becoming a cooperative node through Direct Route can improve the profit of nodes. We are looking for verification nodes on the BSC network to become our partners. If you are interested in becoming a Direct Route partner, please fill out the form below and we will contact you as soon as possible.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe1QZlGoNQ6-JOXYxrbOTYBYtQm3mmIhmAS_fjbOt6OCZqSNg/viewform

Shameless.

By the way if all 21 are in the boat, you could gain even more if you just exclude all tx that didn't pay a "service fee" upfront.

[Lucienest]

Facts have proved that becoming a cooperative node through Direct Route can improve the profit of nodes. We are looking for verification nodes on the BSC network to become our partners. If you are interested in becoming a Direct Route partner, please fill out the form below and we will contact you as soon as possible.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe1QZlGoNQ6-JOXYxrbOTYBYtQm3mmIhmAS_fjbOt6OCZqSNg/viewform

Shameless.

By the way if all 21 are in the boat, you could gain even more if you just exclude all tx that didn't pay a "service fee" upfront.

Their practice violates Consensus of BSC. And yet shamelessly defending their corrupted clients. Someone needs to bring this up to CZ. We have rules but nobody to implement? Ironical 😑

[augustye]

hey, where is MathWallet & TwStaking? only NodeReal cares to respond?

[dgdeivid]

If all validators did that. In the end, wallets like Metamask or new apps would use the direct route and about 100% of the transactions would go directly to the validators. The full nodes would be useless and BSC would be a centralized network of 21 friends.

I think that behaviors like that have to be heavily sanctioned. Validators cannot change the rules at their convenience.

[Lucienest]

If all validators did that. In the end, wallets like Metamask or new apps would use the direct route and about 100% of the transactions would go directly to the validators. The full nodes would be useless and BSC would be a centralized network of 21 friends.

I think that behaviors like that have to be heavily sanctioned. Validators cannot change the rules at their convenience.

What kinda world we are living where there's some third party (aka Nodereal) destroying the good sight of BSC and no one step in. It's no brainer that the Direct Route is aimed for the Front-Runners (Not for the end-user's).

Now next thing could be censoring txns on BSC.

[DreamLxq]

没有人关心这个...(Google translate:No one cares about this...)

[DreamLxq]

If all validators did that. In the end, wallets like Metamask or new apps would use the direct route and about 100% of the transactions would go directly to the validators. The full nodes would be useless and BSC would be a centralized network of 21 friends.

I think that behaviors like that have to be heavily sanctioned. Validators cannot change the rules at their convenience.

这不光是交易的问题...这还涉及了各个游戏的NFT抢购问题,所有玩家都只是韭菜(This is not just a transaction issue...it also involves the NFT snap-up issue of various games, all players are just leeks)

[psdlt]

@realuncle there is now a bot with uses your service to do risk-free rug-pulling on pancakeswap 🙂 good game, well played.

[dgdeivid]

@realuncle there is now a bot with uses your service to do risk-free rug-pulling on pancakeswap 🙂 good game, well played.

This is one of the things that I fear, with the direct route service there is no way to detect liquidity subtraction.

Good news for criminals.

[Lucienest]

@realuncle You guys are upto destroying the integrity of Blockchain's for your own greed? The direct route is a shameless detrimental approach.

[unclezoro]

I think it is better to discuss this within NodeReal's community channel, it is the delegator's choice to decide whether unstake or not. @realuncle Please share the discord, Twitter, or any other social media. We probably close this issue in few days.

[dgdeivid]

Related : #699

[realuncle]

Dear community, thanks for all the feedback. We decide to improve Direct-Route further by placing the transaction within bundles in orders, the transactions submitted through Direct-Route will also obey the gas price auction mechanism, it will rollout out later this month. If you have any questions, please go to our community channel: Discord https://discord.gg/8MPvdmXyRf, https://twitter.com/Nodereal_io, and https://github.com/node-real/

[unclezoro]

will kindly close this issue.

[Lucienest]

I think it is better to discuss this within NodeReal's community channel, it is the delegator's choice to decide whether unstake or not. @realuncle Please share the discord, Twitter, or any other social media. We probably close this issue in few days.

They're the one abusing the validations, and discussing on their community. sure, I doubt it won't be censored, right?