Vitalik Buterin Proposes Making Ethereum Censorship-Resistant
Creator of Ethereum Vitalik Buterin figured out how to protect the blockchain Ethereum from censorship caused by oligopoly, where a few nodes dominate.
In theory, nodes in the cryptocurrency network that add blocks could refuse to include certain transactions in them, thus establishing partial control over blockchain operations. In this case, the Ethereum mainnet would lose its neutral status, which would negatively affect not only the blockchain itself, but also the second-level networks created on its basis.
To prevent censorship, Buterin proposed EIP-7805, which implements forced inclusion of translations in fork-based lists (FOCIL), which works as follows:
- Instead of one validator, 17 are selected to make decisions about adding a block.
- One of them gets a privileged status and can set the order in which transactions are included.
- Any operation proposed by one of the 17 selected validators is added to the block.
Thus, the authority to include transactions in a block and add it to the network will be transferred to 17 randomly selected nodes, instead of one, as is currently the case. Thanks to this, the blockchain will become resistant to censorship. A similar mechanism can be applied to smart contract functions, transfer anonymization protocols, and other services.
Vitalik’s initiative is still under consideration, and there are no guarantees that it will be approved. But if the verdict is positive, the EIP-7805 proposal will be included in the Glamsterdam upgrade, which is planned to be released on June 1, 2026. That is, if FOCIL is used, it will not be any time soon.
