# Time boost: a new transaction ordering policy proposal

**URL:** <https://research.arbitrum.io/t/time-boost-a-new-transaction-ordering-policy-proposal/8173>\
**Category:** Uncategorized\
**Created:** [March 1, 2023, 9:04pm UTC](https://research.arbitrum.io/t/time-boost-a-new-transaction-ordering-policy-proposal/8173 "2023-03-01T21:04:27Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 9

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**Author:** ![0xPandebug](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/research.arbitrum.io/0xpandebug/32/6242_2.png) [@0xPandebug](https://research.arbitrum.io/u/0xPandebug)\
**Post date:** [March 2, 2023, 2:33pm UTC](https://research.arbitrum.io/t/time-boost-a-new-transaction-ordering-policy-proposal/8173/9 "2023-03-02T14:33:46Z")

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Understood that the de facto for Arbitrum is continuous time rather than discretized buckets, I’m just quite unclear as to _why_ that is viewed as so preferable vs. something like @sxysun [FBA-FCFS proposal](https://research.arbitrum.io/t/transaction-ordering-policy/127/2)?

Agreed with @bbuddha as noted above as well:

> Searchers likely care less about being first with respect to time and care more about being first with respect to other searchers, and it seems like a “continuously” growing ledger like Arbitrum’s doesn’t get some of the nice levers in this respect that a “discontinously” growing ledger like Ethereum does (for example running auctions between blocks at a delay beyond which colocation would matter).

Discretizing time into small buckets with privacy maintained seems to still achieve the strong notion of fairness you’re after while providing the flexibility to better express preferences and minimize racing.

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_[View the full topic](https://research.arbitrum.io/t/time-boost-a-new-transaction-ordering-policy-proposal/8173)._