Consumer trades on Ethereum generate value every block. Whether the app that creates it can capture it comes down to one thing: routing control. This piece on consumer orderflow adds to our 2026 series on the Ethereum Block Building landscape.

Since 2024, validators have earned $1.36B in execution-layer rewards – and builders retained $404M in surplus. Where does that edge come from? Continuing our Block Building series, we trace it to exclusive orderflow relationships: why Titan builds half of all blocks but captures 80-85% of builder surplus, how the beaverbuild-to-BuilderNet transition reshuffled the market's most valuable flow, and why block building is a contest of bilateral, contestable relationships rather than platform lock-in.

Who actually pays for priority on Ethereum? Continuing our Block Building series, with the first half of a two-part deep dive into the state of Ethereum block building since 2024: The demand side.

This is a high-level explainer of the Ethereum transaction supply chain and market structure. It aims to set the stage for readers unfamiliar with these topics before using deep on-chain data to quantify the transaction supply chain and its key players in our forthcoming research series. See also the thematically structured glossary below.