mevlog-rs - explore Ethereum from your terminal

Rust-based CLI tool for querying and monitoring Ethereum blockchain transactions, with flexible filtering and EVM tracing capabilities. It's a tool for MEV searchers who prefer command-line workflows over web-based explorers.

mevlog allows you to analyze transaction details via a simple CLI interface. It currently offers the following features:

• regexp search by emmited event names
• search by ENS domain names
• filter txs based on their position in a block
• search by root method calls
• track smart contract storage changes
• detect validator bribes
• filter txs by real (including bribe) gas prices and cost

All while working on public RPC endpoints thanks to leveraging EVM tracing via Revm.

You can check out this article for technical details on how this project is implemented.

Getting started

git clone https://github.com/pawurb/mevlog-rs
cd mevlog-rs
cargo install --path .

or install from the crates.io:

cargo install mevlog
mevlog watch --rpc-url https://eth.merkle.io 

On initial run mevlog downloads ~120mb openchain.xyz signatures database and extracts it to ~/.mevlog. Signatures data allows displaying human readable info instead of hex blobs.

To avoid throttling on public endpoints watch mode displays only the top 5 transactions from each block.

You can change it using the --position argument:

## display the top 20 txs from each new block
mevlog watch -p 0:19 

Filtering options

A few examples of currently supported queries:

• find jaredfromsubway.eth transactions from the last 20 blocks that landed in positions 0-5:

mevlog search -b 10:latest -p 0:5 --from jaredfromsubway.eth

• unknown method signature contract call in a top position (likely an MEV bot):

mevlog search -b 10:latest --method "<Unknown>" -p 0

• query the last 50 blocks for transaction in the top 20 slots that transferred PEPE token:

mevlog search -b 50:latest -p 0:20 --event "Transfer(address,address,uint256)|0x6982508145454ce325ddbe47a25d4ec3d2311933"

• blocks between 22034300 and 22034320, position 0 transaction that did not emit any Swap events:

mevlog search -b 22034300:22034320 -p 0 --not-event "/(Swap).+/"

• blocks range for events containing rebase and Transfer keywords:

mevlog search -b 22045400:22045420 --event "/(?i)(rebase).+/" --event "/(Transfer).+/"

Event filters

The --event and --not-event options allow filtering transactions based on emitted events. The filter criteria can be:

• a contract address matching on any emmited events 0x6982508145454ce325ddbe47a25d4ec3d2311933
• a full event signature Transfer(address,uint256)
• a regular expression pattern /(?i)(rebase).+/
• a combination of an event signature and a contract address Transfer(address,uint256)|0x6982508145454ce325ddbe47a25d4ec3d2311933

You can supply mutiple --event and --not-event flags for precise control over which transactions are included or excluded.

EVM tracing filters

All the above queries use only standard block and logs input. By enabling --trace [rpc|revm] flag you can query by more conditions:

• query last 5 blocks for a top transaction that paid over 0.02 ETH total (including coinbase bribe) transaction cost:

mevlog search -b 5:latest -p 0 --real-tx-cost ge20000000000000000 --trace revm

• find txs that changed storage slots of the Balancer vault contract:

mevlog search -b 10:latest --touching 0xba12222222228d8ba445958a75a0704d566bf2c8 --trace rpc

You can also filter by real (including bribe) gas price:

mevlog search -b 5:latest -p 0:5 --real-gas-price ge10000000000 --trace rpc

All the filter conditions can be combined. Here's a complete list of currently supported filters:

Options:
  -f, --from <FROM>
          Filter by tx source address or ENS name
  -t, --touching <TOUCHING>
          Filter by contracts with storage changed by the transaction
      --event <EVENT>
          Include txs by event names matching the provided regex or signature and optionally an address
      --not-event <NOT_EVENT>
          Exclude txs by event names matching the provided regex or signature and optionally an address
      --method <METHOD>
          Include txs with root method names matching the provided regex or signature
      --tx-cost <TX_COST>
          Filter by tx cost in wei (e.g., 'ge10000000000000000', 'le10000000000000000')
      --real-tx-cost <REAL_TX_COST>
          Filter by real (including coinbase bribe) tx cost in wei (e.g., 'ge10000000000000000', 'le10000000000000000')
      --gas-price <GAS_PRICE>
          Filter by effective gas price in wei (e.g., 'ge2000000000', 'le2000000000')
      --real-gas-price <REAL_GAS_PRICE>
          Filter by real (including coinbase bribe) effective gas price in wei (e.g., 'ge2000000000', 'le2000000000')

Both search and watch support the same filtering options.

EVM tracing modes

--trace rpc

This mode uses the debug_traceTransaction method. It's usually not available on public endpoints.

--trace revm

This mode leverages Revm tracing by downloading all the relevant storage slots and running simulations locally. If you want to trace a transaction at position 10, Revm must first simulate all the previous transactions from this block. It can be slow and cause throttling from public endpoints. This mode works only on HTTP endpoints. Websockets are currently not supported.

Subsequent revm simulations for the same block and transaction range use cached data and should be significantly faster.

Analyzing a single transaction data

mevlog tx 0x06fed3f7dc71194fe3c2fd379ef1e8aaa850354454ea9dd526364a4e24853660 

This command displays info for a single target transaction. By adding --before --after arguments you can include surrounding transactions:

mevlog tx 0x06fed3f7dc71194fe3c2fd379ef1e8aaa850354454ea9dd526364a4e24853660 -B 1 -A 1

You can reverse the display order by adding the --reverse flag.

Project status

WIP, feedback appreciated.