We introduce a modified Schnorr signature scheme to allow for time-bound signatures for transaction fee auction bidding and smart contract purposes in a blockchain context, ensuring an honest producer can only validate a signature before a given block height. The immutable blockchain is used as a source of universal time for the signature scheme. We show the use of such a signature scheme leads to lower MEV revenue for builders. We then apply our time-bound signatures to Ethereum's EIP-1559 and show how it can be used to mitigate the effect of MEV on predicted equilibrium strategies.
@article{arxiv.2510.03697,
title = {A Time-Bound Signature Scheme for Blockchains},
author = {Benjamin Marsh and Paolo Serafino},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2510.03697},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
Accepted to the 2025 IEEE International Conference on Blockchain