Blockchain's economic value lies in enabling financial and economic transactions that do not require trusted, centralized intermediaries. In practice, however, transactions must pass through several intermediaries before being included on-chain. We study empirically whether this process undermines blockchain's stated benefits by assembling a novel dataset of 15,097 non-winning Ethereum blocks--blocks proposed by builders but not ultimately selected for inclusion. We show that 21% of user transactions are delayed: although proposed in some candidate blocks, they are not included in the winning block. Approximately 30% of these delayed transactions are exclusive to a single losing builder, indicating that transaction routing materially affect inclusion outcomes. We further document substantial heterogeneity in execution quality: both the probability of successful execution and the execution price of users' swaps vary across candidate blocks. Finally, we study two arbitrage bots trading between decentralized (DEX) and centralized exchanges (CEX). We document intense competition for the same arbitrage opportunities and estimate that these bots trade USDC/WETH and USDT/WETH on centralized exchanges at prices approximately 2.8 basis points more favorable than contemporaneous Binance prices.
翻译：区块链的经济价值在于实现无需可信、中心化中介的金融与经济交易。然而在实践中，交易在最终上链前必须经过多个中介环节。本研究通过构建一个包含15,097个未入选以太坊区块（由构建者提议但最终未被选入主链的区块）的新型数据集，实证检验这一过程是否削弱了区块链的宣称优势。我们发现21%的用户交易存在延迟现象：尽管在某些候选区块中被提议，但最终未能被纳入胜出区块。其中约30%的延迟交易仅出现在单个落选构建者的区块中，这表明交易路由路径对交易上链结果产生实质性影响。我们进一步记录了执行质量的显著异质性：用户兑换交易的成功执行概率与执行价格在不同候选区块间存在差异。最后，我们研究了两个在去中心化交易所（DEX）与中心化交易所（CEX）间套利的交易机器人。研究记录了针对相同套利机会的激烈竞争，并估算出这些机器人在中心化交易所进行USDC/WETH和USDT/WETH交易时，其成交价格较同期币安价格平均优化约2.8个基点。
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