Ethereum strengthens censorship resistance as FOCIL inclusion takes center stage in the Hegota upgrade

Developers are preparing a major consensus-layer change for Ethereum, with focil inclusion emerging as a crucial tool to harden the network against censorship and improve transaction guarantees.

FOCIL and the Hegota upgrade roadmap

Ethereum core contributors are advancing a new mechanism to reinforce censorship resistance, as discussion around the upcoming Hegota upgrade coalesces around Fork-Choice Enforced Inclusion Lists. The change is expected to follow the planned Glamsterdam update on the protocol roadmap.

The proposal, formally known as FOCIL or EIP-7805, has been flagged for Specification Freeze Included status. Moreover, it is widely expected to headline the consensus-layer modifications in the Hegota fork, underscoring its importance for Ethereum’s long-term neutrality.

How FOCIL targets transaction inclusion guarantees

FOCIL introduces a system in which multiple randomly selected actors per slot can enforce transaction inclusion. In each slot, 17 participants are chosen at random, including the block proposer and designated includers, to help guarantee that pending transactions are written into blocks.

The design aims to deliver rapid inclusion, typically within one to two slots, even if block production is temporarily controlled by an adversarial proposer. However, this mechanism is engineered to work within Ethereum’s existing consensus rules, rather than replacing them.

In its current specification, each FOCIL list is capped at an 8 kilobyte size. Researchers have already outlined potential avenues to expand this capacity over time, allowing a larger fraction of each block’s transactions to pass through the enforced inclusion list path if network conditions demand it.

The fork choice enforced inclusion design preserves proposer-builder separation through enshrined PBS, meaning the crucial ‘last look’ tied to maximal extractable value (MEV) remains allocated via auction. That said, this role is not granted to inclusion list participants, limiting their power over ordering even while they influence inclusion.

Thomas Thiery, a researcher in the Ethereum Foundation’s Robust Incentives Group, has been a leading proponent of FOCIL as a way to strengthen ethereum censorship resistance. His broader research focuses on block production centralization and proposer-builder separation, both directly addressed by the new mechanism.

EIP-8141 and smart account integration

In parallel, Vitalik Buterin has outlined how EIP-8141, an account abstraction proposal building on EIP-7701, is designed to operate alongside FOCIL. According to Buterin, eip 8141 smart accounts would become first-class transaction senders on Ethereum.

Under this framework, smart accounts could natively support features such as multisignature authorization, quantum-resistant signatures, key rotation, gas sponsorship, and direct interactions with privacy protocols. Moreover, they would no longer need wrapper transactions, simplifying how advanced wallets and protocols interact with the base layer.

With this structure, transactions from smart wallets or privacy tools could be broadcast through a public mempool and then received directly by a FOCIL includer. The intentional combination of FOCIL inclusion and EIP-8141 would allow such transactions to be confirmed on-chain without intermediaries, even when proposers ignore public mempools or selectively exclude specific applications.

Implications for PBS and MEV markets

The new design consciously maintains proposer builder separation, ensuring that the high-stakes MEV flow remains governed by open auctions rather than by inclusion list participants. However, by distributing inclusion power across 17 randomly selected actors per slot, Ethereum reduces any single entity’s ability to censor transactions while still preserving market-based MEV competition.

Developers and researchers see these combined changes as a key step toward more robust, neutral infrastructure. In summary, the Hegota fork, anchored by EIP-7805 and EIP-8141, aims to strengthen Ethereum’s guarantees around transaction inclusion, smart account usability, and decentralized block production without undermining existing MEV auction preservation mechanisms.