New article on post-merge validator returns on Ethereum. pintail.xyz/posts/post-mer…
I looked at a year of MEV data to estimate how validator returns might look if similar amounts of MEV are available post-merge. I couldn't go further back than a year, because since EIP-1559 introduced fee-burn the dynamics of MEV changed dramatically as shown in this chart. 
Additionally levels of MEV have varied significantly over the last year as shown below. I ended up dividing the dataset into a "high MEV" regime from Sep 2021 to Feb 2022 and "low MEV" from Mar 2022 to Aug 2022.
TL;DR: modelled median returns were 6.8% based on the whole dataset but 7.6% in the high MEV scenario or 6.1% in the low MEV scenario (these figures include consensus layer rewards and execution layer transaction fees).
But regardless of the level of MEV, there is variation across the validator set largely due to the random chance of being selected as a proposer. In the above chart the unluckiest of validators earned 4.2% whereas the luckiest got almost 30% APR!
Of course, running multiple validators reduces the variability of rewards. Being part of a big staking pool means you should receive close to the mean return (less fees) - see the red dashed line below.
Caveat: all of this is speculative, and there are many unknowns. Past performance is no guarantee of future returns!
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