Buterin Unveils Plan to Tackle Ethereum Centralization and MEV

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has outlined a multi-stage plan to combat block builder centralization and MEV (Maximal Extractable Value) on the Ethereum network. The first step in this plan is the upcoming Glamsterdam upgrade, which will introduce enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation (ePBS) directly into Ethereum's consensus layer.

This upgrade separates the roles of block proposers and block builders but doesn't address the risk that a small number of builders could still dominate and censor transactions. To tackle this issue, Buterin has proposed FOCIL (Fork-Choice Enforced Inclusion Lists) as the next step in the Ethereum roadmap.

FOCIL is designed to enable multi-participant block building by having 16 randomly selected attesters nominate transactions that must be included in the next block. Any block that ignores these nominations will be rejected by the network.

However, Buterin also outlined a more speculative extension of FOCIL, which he calls 'Big FOCIL'. This would involve growing the inclusion lists large enough to cover all transactions, potentially reducing a builder's role to ordering only MEV-relevant transactions like DEX arbitrage.