Chain Reactions: How Nonce Collisions in ECDSA Compromise Polygon MEV Searchers
Authors: Yash Madhwal, Andrey Seoev, Raffaele Della Pietra et al.
Summary
arXiv:2605. 21498v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: ECDSA signatures form the bedrock of blockchain transaction authentication, yet their security critically depends on proper nonce generation.
Relevance
Read next because Chain Reactions: How Nonce Collisions in ECDSA Compromise Polygon MEV Searchers overlaps with clean result "The marker is a representational handle, not a behavioural one — sharing it between a villain persona and the assistant transfers no misalignment (HIGH confidence)", experiment "Implement Chen et al. persona-vector extraction recipe and compare to project's centroid-difference recipe", experiment "Follow-up to #354: cascading chunk-binding — does A→B, B→C, C→D propagate the full chain on a recipient trained only to emit A?". Matching terms: line, rate, implement, chain. Source: arxiv cs.CR (Cryptography and Security).
Threat model
Potential threat/caveat for clean result "The marker is a representational handle, not a behavioural one — sharing it between a villain persona and the assistant transfers no misalignment (HIGH confidence)": this item discusses failure, failures.
Abstract
arXiv:2605.21498v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: ECDSA signatures form the bedrock of blockchain transaction authentication, yet their security critically depends on proper nonce generation. We uncover a critical vulnerability in the Polygon MEV ecosystem: systematic nonce reuse that enables complete private key recovery. Analyzing on-chain data reveals that searchers, driven by the need for sub-second response times in sealed-bid auctions, employ predictable nonce patterns. These patterns create linear relationships between signatures, allowing passive attackers to recover private keys using elementary algebra. We provide a compact linear-system formulation for such attacks, including the dangerous case of cross-wallet nonce collisions, and present concrete evidence of exploitable patterns on Polygon. Our findings demonstrate how protocol-induced latency pressures can lead to catastrophic cryptographic failures in production blockchain systems, where a single implementation error compromises multiple accounts simultaneously.