An update on timeboost

Old post

What is this about

Earlier this month (Feb. 2026), I dumped my thoughts about timeboost into a blog post and published it on my website.
Since then quite a lot happened and the timeboost landscape completely changed, setting an unprecedented shift in timeboost economics and usage.

What changed

At the time of writing my original article (2026-02-08) Selini Capital and Wintermute dropped around $100K each on timeboost, in just the past 7 days. This of course makes it impossible for the timeboost bundler Kairos to win any auctions and resell timeboost access lucratively. In general, this was the pattern timeboost drew ever since it’s inception in April 2025, big operators spending hundreds of thousands on timeboost while the rest of the MEV scene suffered an extra 200ms inclusion delay. However, 17 days ago (at the time of writing) one of the two big operators, Selini Capital or Wintermute, stopped participating in all auctions. This does of course have a huge impact on pricing. Without another party participating in these huge price biddings, timeboost pricing dropped dramatically. Resulting in Kairos actually winning the majority of auctions now. This makes timeboost accessible for all kinds of MEV operators now, big and small. Inclusion now works similar to how traditional builders on ethereum include transactions. This makes timeboost actually viable and usable now.

The details

0x95c0…b018 stopped participating in auctions. While this is great for the MEV space and gives access to MEV operators of all kind, the actor still has around $60K (~30 ETH) deposited into the timeboost contract at the time of writing. The price drop which resulted in this is massive, from around $220k in the past 7 days in the first week in Feb 2026 to around $15k in past 7 days of writing this article (late Feb 2026). Whether this shift is permanent remains to be seen, but for now, the Timeboost landscape looks fundamentally different than it did a month ago.