Yes aware, I mentioned this in several comments above. That last look advantage is a well understood property of this kind of discrete time auction, can see the Budish paper as well. The reality though is that delta is nowhere near the 20x you mention here. The relevant difference here for capturing an opportunity is the difference between:
- “fast searcher” vs. “slow searcher” (negligible difference)
Not relevant:
- “fast searcher” vs. “regular user” (large difference, as you note)
Regular user txs aren’t competing in a race for a specific arb or anything against searchers. They just want to keep their txs private and be included relatively quickly.
This marginal benefit left seems smaller than the benefit of latency in the Time Boost scenario, where the latency advantage is always present (you can always bid less). This is particularly relevant in the case of high value opportunities where the Time Boost is worth a lot as you go further down the curve.