Is The Future of Ethereum Centralised and Censored?

In this episode, host Friederike Ernst is joined by Thomas Thiery, a researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, to discuss EIP-7805 and the implementation of FOCIL (Fork-Choice Enforced Inclusion Lists). Thomas explains how the rise of MEV (Maximal Extractable Value) has created a centralized builder market where a few actors now control over 85% of Ethereum's block production, creating a dangerous bottleneck for censorship. FOCIL addresses this by empowering a decentralized committee of 16 validators to mandate transaction inclusion, making any block that ignores these lists invalid.

 

They explore the "Tornado Cash" moment and the risks of "silent censorship" for competitive or regulatory reasons. Thomas explains why FOCIL intentionally prioritizes the public mempool over MEV-heavy transactions to prevent the system from being co-opted. Finally, the conversation looks at the future of the Ethereum roadmap, including the Osaka fork and the technical trade-offs between inclusion lists and long-term privacy solutions like encrypted mempools.

 

Topics

• 00:00 Intro & FOCIL

• 04:15 MEV & Centralization

• 09:30 The Builder-Searcher Pipeline

• 15:00 Silent Censorship Risks

• 21:45 FOCIL Architecture & Committees

• 27:10 Validity Rules for Attestors

• 35:20 Spam Protection & Invalid TXs

• 42:15 FOCIL vs. Encrypted Mempools

• 49:00 EIP-7805 Status & Fork Timelines

• 55:30 Future: PQC & ZK EVM

Links

• Thomas Thiery on X: https://x.com/soispoke

• Ethereum Foundation: https://ethereum.foundation/

• EIP-7805 (FOCIL): https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-7805

• Gnosis: https://gnosis.io/

Sponsors: Gnosis: Gnosis has been building core decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem since 2015. With the launch of Gnosis Pay last year, we introduced the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Start leveraging its power today at http://gnosis.io