category.shared_sequencers.label

category.shared_sequencers.promise

Starting path

The category's flagship says, in its own glossary, that it does not sequence.

Shared sequencers evaluated on which rollups actually sequence through them on mainnet today by name, who orders your transactions and whether one operator can stop them, what you pay and who takes the MEV, and what the documentation says happens the day it halts.

category.shared_sequencers.promise Reviewed on which rollups actually sequence through them on mainnet today by name, who orders your transactions and whether one operator can stop them, what you pay and who takes the MEV, and what the documentation says happens the day it halts.

Start with the smart category assistant or jump straight into quick questions. Both paths narrow to the same recommendation standard.

How we review

Recommendation first, comparison only if needed.

Reviewed and rechecked on the current cycle.

Commercial relationships disclosed before clickout.

Audit

Infrastructure

Methodology

2026.04.0

published 2026-04-27

Providers tracked

670+

across 75 categories

Last verified

2026-08-06

editorial freshness

Editorial board

4

audit-log live

Decision guide

What matters most before choosing in this category

The honest answer for most teams today is not yet, and the evidence for that is unusually clean. The category's best-known name states in its own glossary that it does not replace the sequencer — it provides settlement and finality for blocks a chain's own sequencer already produced, which is a different product from the one the category is named for. Not one of the six providers publishes a price. Cross-rollup atomicity, the specific benefit that justifies surrendering your ordering and your MEV, could not be verified as live anywhere in the pool. And two of the candidates a buyer would have shortlisted shut down within nine months of each other, for commercial rather than technical reasons. If you are evaluating this seriously, the question to put to a vendor is which mainnet rollups sequence through them today, by name.

Key question

Which rollups are sequencing through this on mainnet today, by name — not in a testnet or a roadmap?

Key question

Is the thing being sold actually ordering, or is it settlement and finality for someone else's ordering?

Key question

What does the documentation say happens on the day the sequencer halts?

Current editor lead

Taiko (Taiko Alethia)

Based rollup whose L2 proposals are ordered by Ethereum L1 consensus rather than a dedicated sequencer, with the fast proposing path currently gated by a preconfirmation whitelist.

Data checked Aug 2026

Based rollup whose L2 proposals are ordered by Ethereum L1 consensus rather than a dedicated sequencer, with the fast proposing path currently gated by a preconfirmation whitelist. Strongest on what you pay, what you keep, and who takes the mev (9/10): The only provider in the pool that publishes both a split with numbers and a stated MEV destination. The split is on this page: priority fees to the L2 block proposer, "**75% of base fees** from L2 transactions" to the proposer, and "The Taiko DAO Treasury receives **25% of the L2 base fee**". Corrected during… Weakest on who actually orders your transactions, and can one operator stop them (5/10): The design delegates ordering to Ethereum but the fast path is not that today, and the neutral assessment is harsher than the vendor's. L2BEAT states verbatim on this page: "Proposing is gated by PreconfWhitelist, which selects a single active operator for the current epoch and has no permissionless fallback." Taiko's… Published price: The only published revenue split in this pool. Corrected during verification: the draft presented three markdown table rows as character-exact quotes ("| **Priority fee** | 100% | L2 block proposer |" and similar); those strings do not exist as written…

Best for

What you pay, what you keep, and who takes the MEV — 9/10What the documentation says happens the day it stops — 7/10

Main tradeoff

Taiko is in this comparison as the production instance of the rival architecture — outsourcing ordering to Ethereum's proposer set instead of to a new one — not as a sequencing service a rollup can buy. It sequences one chain, it is rated Stage 0 by L2BEAT with the missing requirement "Users' withdrawals can be censored by the permissioned operators", and its contracts are instantly upgradable with no exit window. The buyer should also weigh that the vendor's docs and the neutral risk assessment directly contradict each other on whether a permissionless proposing fallback exists.

Verify before signup

The only published revenue split in this pool. Corrected during verification: the draft presented three markdown table rows as character-exact quotes ("| **Priority fee** | 100% | L2 block proposer |" and similar); those strings do not exist as written because the real table is column-padded, so they are replaced here with prose that does appear verbatim on the same page. Taiko's economics page states the proposer's revenue as "**Priority fees** from all transactions in the blocks they propose." and "**75% of base fees** from L2 transactions.", and states that "The Taiko DAO Treasury receives **25% of the L2 base fee**". The underlying fee-flow table allocates the priority fee 100% to the L2 block proposer, the base fee 75% to the L2 block proposer and 25% to the Taiko DAO Treasury. Two costs are named and one is explicitly not published: the prover fee is "Compensation to provers for generating validity proofs. This is negotiated off-chain between proposers and provers." The bond is currently waived: "The live Shasta configuration currently runs with a liveness bond of `0`." (docs.taiko.xyz/protocol/economics.md, fetched 2026-08-06). NOTE FOR THE BUYER: this is the economics of running as a proposer on Taiko, not a subscription price for sequencing-as-a-service; Taiko publishes no such subscription price because it does not sell one.

Weighted criteria

Rollups actually sequencing through it on mainnet today, by name35%

Who actually orders your transactions, and can one operator stop them25%

What you pay, what you keep, and who takes the MEV20%

What the documentation says happens the day it stops20%

Leading options

Shared shortlist for this category

These providers are pulled from the same category comparison catalog used in validation, so the category page, comparison page, and provider reviews stay aligned.

Espresso Network

Delegated proof-of-stake network that finalises blocks produced by each chain's own dedicated sequencer, integrated almost entirely through the Caldera rollup-as-a-service platform.

Editor lead

Delegated proof-of-stake network that finalises blocks produced by each chain's own dedicated sequencer, integrated almost entirely through the Caldera rollup-as-a-service platform. Strongest on what the documentation says happens the day it stops (8/10): The most complete failure documentation in the pool, and unusually candid about the second-order damage. Corrected during verification: the draft transliterated Espresso's curly apostrophe to a straight one, so its headline quote matched nothing; the page actually reads "In the unlikely event that Espresso goes… Weakest on what you pay, what you keep, and who takes the mev (3/10): A mechanism without a number. Restated from the raw markdown after the draft's quotes failed a character-exact check. The note describes bundle bidding — "During the bidding phase, each potential sequencer submits bids to the marketplace for the bundles they want to sequence." (the draft dropped the opening clause and… Published price: No price, rate, revenue share or fee schedule appears anywhere in Espresso's documentation. The integration guide ends at a sales step: "Not sure which path fits? [Contact Espresso](https://form.typeform.com/to/KgayxNsX?typeform-source=www.espressosys.com) to…

Best for: What the documentation says happens the day it stops — 8/10

Taiko (Taiko Alethia)

Based rollup whose L2 proposals are ordered by Ethereum L1 consensus rather than a dedicated sequencer, with the fast proposing path currently gated by a preconfirmation whitelist.

Best for: What you pay, what you keep, and who takes the MEV — 9/10

Radius

Encrypted-mempool block building plus a cross-rollup MEV auction, documented across three testnets with no mainnet deployment or live chain named.

Encrypted-mempool block building plus a cross-rollup MEV auction, documented across three testnets with no mainnet deployment or live chain named. Strongest on who actually orders your transactions, and can one operator stop them (4/10): A real restaked design, described only for a testnet. Verbatim on this page: "Loggia enables rollups to achieve censorship resistance, while economically securing sequencing liveness and block safety with restaked ETH", built on "Radius AVS (Actively Validated Services) built on Eigenlayer", with a proposer defined as… Weakest on rollups actually sequencing through it on mainnet today, by name (0/10): The complete documentation index contains exactly 77 page entries (counted from the fetched llms.txt on 2026-08-06) and not one mainnet or live-chains section. Every deployment page sits under a testnet heading — "Loggia Testnet with Radius AVS", "Portico Testnet", "Curie Testnet" — and no rollup, chain or customer is… Published price: No price, fee, rate or revenue share appears anywhere in Radius's documentation. The About page ends at a contact link — "**Conact Us:** [Contact Form](https://www.theradius.xyz/contact)" (spelling as published) — and the roadmap closes the same way: "Advance…

Best for: Who actually orders your transactions, and can one operator stop them — 4/10

Browse this network

Methodology

How this category is reviewed

Reviewed on which rollups actually sequence through them on mainnet today by name, who orders your transactions and whether one operator can stop them, what you pay and who takes the MEV, and what the documentation says happens the day it halts.

Reviewed on: Rollups actually sequencing through it on mainnet today, by name, Who actually orders your transactions, and can one operator stop them, What you pay, what you keep, and who takes the MEV, What the documentation says happens the day it stops.

This page is a maintained category surface, not a static marketing block. Review freshness, provider positioning, and recommendation logic should stay consistent with quiz and provider pages.

Frequently asked

Questions people ask before choosing sequencers

Should I use a shared sequencer yet?

Probably not, and this page exists to say so with evidence rather than to rank a category into looking ready. The specific promise — cross-rollup atomicity, the ability for transactions on two rollups to succeed or fail together — could not be verified as live at any provider in this pool. One lists it as an unchecked box on a page last updated two years ago; another's multi-rollup design has a documentation URL that returns a 404. Meanwhile the ordinary alternative, running your own sequencer, has no vendor dependency and no revenue share. The case for outsourcing gets much stronger the day atomicity is demonstrably live, and that day is checkable rather than promised.

What does the flagship product actually do?

Not what the category name implies, and it says so itself. Its glossary states that it does not replace the sequencer, and that it instead provides decentralised settlement and finality for the blocks a chain's own sequencer produces. That is a real and useful product — but a team shopping for shared sequencing on the strength of the brand would be buying something else. Worth noting how this was established: its own live-chains reference turned out to be stale, and that only surfaced by calling the published endpoints rather than reading the page, with several failing to answer at all.

What will it cost?

Nobody in this category will tell you before a sales conversation. All six route pricing to a contact form, an email address, or an invitation to schedule an architecture review; two publish revenue-side claims with no cost attached. That is scored rather than treated as neutral, because sequencing is a per-transaction cost on your chain's critical path and a price you cannot model is a commitment you cannot size. If a vendor will quote you, get the MEV policy and the revenue share in the same document — the money in this arrangement moves in both directions.

REVIEWEDApr 2026METHOD4 criteriaCATEGORYshared_sequencers

Not financial advice · For informational purposes only · Always do your own research

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