Illuminating Ethereum's Order Flow Landscape

The article argues that Ethereum's order flow landscape is a nascent, fragile opportunity: a decentralized order flow network built on centralized infrastructure, in which permissionless searchers and liquidity providers can create competitive execution without relying on a few sophisticated market makers as tradfi does. It contrasts this with US equity payment for order flow, where over 90% of retail orders go to six wholesale market makers, and Robinhood's Q3 2023 report shows Citadel filling 29% to 37% of its orders by category. Using November 2023 data, it reports that Uniswap's website app and wallet processed $4.03B in volume, and that three solver auctions (Cowswap, 1inch Fusion and Uniswap X) had 22 solvers accessing over 33 liquidity sources.