Welcome To Proof Of Neutrality Relay

The Proof of Neutrality Relay (PoN) is a decentralized, permissionless, and neutral middleware run by validators to participate in the market for block-building and exchange. The PoN relay was built by Blockswap Labs as a solution implementing in protocol Proposer-Builder Separation theory (PBS).

Why build the Proof of Neutrality Relay?

Ethereum’s credible neutrality and decentralization of consensus is under threat from centralized relays and censorship caused by MEV. The PoN relay’s decentralized infrastructure is necessary to prevent a world of permissioned communication between block-builders and block proposers.

Validators and MEV will become more closely linked in a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) environment due to the appeal of higher MEV staking rewards and their growing importance as staking participation increases and rewards will inevitably decrease. The PoN relay maximizes validator staking rewards through the selling of blockspace to an open market, allowing for consistent MEV payouts from the PBS Smoothing Pool.

How does the Proof of Neutrality Relay Work?

In the Ethereum Proof-of-Stake (PoS) system, node operators use three essential pieces of software components: the validator client, the execution client, and the consensus client. The PoN relay is an additional open-source software that seamlessly integrates with the consensus client, allowing for connection to a network of block-builders and the outsourcing of block-building. Additionally, it uses zero-knowledge proofs and encrypted communication to facilitate the builder’s request for a validator, ensuring guaranteed validator payment inclusion in a block while also keeping block content unrevealed.

Block-builders create full blocks aiming for the optimal MEV extraction and equitable distribution of rewards. Once they are done, the blocks are sent to relays. The PoN relay selects the most profitable block received from various builders, submits it to the block proposer, and the consensus client then sends it to the Ethereum network for verification and block inclusion.

Reporters are a novel addition and essential for a decentralized infrastructure to run smoothly. In the PoN relay, reporters monitor the actions of builders and proposers to ensure that there is no malicious behavior or wrongdoing. If a violation occurs, the reporter can submit a report and earn ETH for securing the protocol.

Goals Of PON Relay

• Bid Neutrality- PoN Network and in hinsight, PoN relay at no point has access to the block transactions being built by the relay. This way the builder is alyways secure from the relay. There are rules and monitoring stack governed by the Restrictive Partially Blind Scheme which ensure no party including the PoN relay is ever cheated by any other PoN component.
• Performance- PoN Relay uses post epoch validation which makes the need for relay level block simulation redundant. By removing block validation, the performance is increased much more which translates into more MEV available monteraly for the builders.
• Transparency- PoN Relay implements out of the box data APIs while also allowing for easy setup of external services like Metabase for data transparency. Anyone can run reporter with PoN relay and maintain transparency of the bids being submitted to PoN Relay and ones being proposed.
• Support For Extensive Block Building- PoN Relay uses bulletin board (A MQTT Bases Pub Sub) and its two bids Auction to help the builders build best blocks. Bulletin Board provides a low resource intensive solution for the builders to get updated bids from and based on the updating auction scenerio builders can update the bids.

Architecture

While PoN maintains the Proposer Builder Separation, currently widely being used in MEV supply chain, it also does some changes which help in achieving neutrality at the relay level.

Easy Install

Install latest release from pon-bbrelay

Install and run using-

$ go install github.com/pon-pbs/bbrelay
$ bbrelay --help

Setting Up PON Network

PON Consists of Relay, Builder and Reporter, all of which are essential. If you want to run builder or relay please use the following steps-

Builder

• Visit Builder Repository
• Build following the instructions provided

Reporter

• Visit Reporter Repository

  Note - The reporter is under development so always use the latest version of reporter

Building Relay

Building From Binaries

Automated builds are available for stable releases and the unstable master branch. Binary archives are published at https://github.com/pon-pbs/bbRelay.

Use the binaries along with the to install and run relay from binaries

Building From Docker

To run relay using docker-

docker pull blockswap/pon-relay
docker run --network=host blockswap/pon-relay relay

While running using docker, use command line arguments same as other ways

Building From Source

To run from source use the main branch of this repository and use the following command-

go migrate
go run . relay \
--relay-url <Relay_URL> \
--beacon-uris <Beacon_URIS> \
--redis-uri <Redis_URIS> \
--db <DB_URL> \
--secret-key <Relay_BLS> \
--network <Network> \
--max-db-connections <Max_DB_Connections> \
--max-idle-connections <Max_Idle_Connections> \
--max-idle-timeout <Max_Idle_Timeout> \
--db-driver <DB_Driver> \
--pon-pool <PON_POOL_URL> \
--pon-pool-API-Key <PON_POOL_API_KEY> \
--bulletinBoard-broker <Bulletin_Board_Broker> \
--bulletinBoard-port <Bulletin_Board_Port> \
--bulletinBoard-client <Bulletin_Board_Client> \
--bulletinBoard-password <Bulletin_Board_Password> \
--reporter-url <Reporter_URL> \
--bid-timeout <Bid_Timeout> \
--relay-read-timeout <Relay_Read_Timeout> \
--relay-read-header-timeout <Relay_Read_Header_Timeout>
--relay-write-timeout <Relay_Write_Timeout> \
--relay-idle-timeout <Relay_Idle_Timeout> \
--new-relic-application <New_Relic_Application> \
--new-relic-license <New_Relic_License> \
--new-relic-forwarding <New_Relic_Forwarding>

Relay Services

If You Want To Run A Postgres Server And Redis Use The Provided Docker Compose File By Following The Docker Documentation If you use your own POSTGRES_DB_USER and POSTGRES_DB_PASSWORD, please update parameter when running relay based on that

Metabase

PON Relay comes with a metabase docker-compose file. It can be used by following the Docker Documentation. For Performance Its Better If You Run The Service In Different Machine Then The Relay

PoN Builder Parameters

Parameter	Description	Default	Required
--relay-url	Listen Address For The PoN Relay Service Locally	"localhost:9000"	No
--beacon-uris	Beacon Node Endpoint	""	Yes
--db	Database URL	""	Yes
--secret-key	BLS Secret Key Of Relay	""	Yes
--network	Network (Testnet/ Mainnet)	"Testnet"	No
--max-db-connections	Maximum Database Connections	100	No
--max-idle-connections	Maximum Database Idle Connections	100	No
--max-idle-timeout	Maximum Database Timeout (In 1s/ 5h format)	100s	No
--db-driver	Database Driver	postgres	No
--pon-pool	Pon Pool Subgraph URL	""	Yes
--bulletinBoard-broker	Bulletin Board MQTT Broker URL	""	Yes
--bulletinBoard-port	Bulletin Board MQTT Port	""	Yes
--bulletinBoard-client	Bulletin Board Client	""	Yes
--bulletinBoard-password	Bulletin Board Password	""	Yes
--bid-timeout	Maximum Time Bid Is Kept With Relay (In 1s/ 5h format)	"15s"	No
--relay-read-timeout	Relay Server Read Timeout (In 1s/ 5h format)	"10s"	No
--relay-read-header-timeout	Relay Server Read Header Timeout (In 1s/ 5h format)	"10s"	No
--relay-write-timeout	Relay Server Write Timeout (In 1s/ 5h format)	"10s"	No
--relay-idle-timeout	Relay Idle Timeout (In 1s/ 5h format)	"10s"	No
--new-relic-application	New Relic Application (New Relic Not Used If Application Not Provided)	""	No
--new-relic-license	New Relic License	""	No
--new-relic-forwarding	New Relic Forwarding	false	No

Hardware Requirements

API Spec

API Spec Is Generated Using Go-Swagger for Open API Implementation. You can follow the specification by visiting the API-Spec If you want to make changes to the swagger file, run the following commands-

make swagger
make serve-swagger

Whitelisted Relays

Relay ECDSA	Relay BLS Public Key	Relay API
N/A	0xa44f64faca0209764461b2abfe3533f9f6ed1d51844974e22d79d4cfd06eff858bb434d063e512ce55a1841e66977bfd	proof-relayer.pon-relay.com

Getting Your Relay Whitelisted

Make a PR that adds your details to whitelisted relay table and we will approve your relay and add to the payout pool.

Software is provided with no guarantees

Please note that this relay has not been subjected to a security audit. By using this relay, there is a risk that assets could be compromised. Therefore, you use this relay at your own risk. It is provided as is, as a public good, without any guarantees.