Ethereum Co-Founder Unveils Multi-Stage Plan to Combat Block Builder Centralization and MEV

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has outlined a multi-stage plan to address block builder centralization and MEV (Maximum Extractable Value) on the Ethereum network.

The plan, which comes after the upcoming Glamsterdam upgrade, includes introducing Proposer-Builder Separation (PBS) directly into Ethereum's consensus layer. However, Buterin argues that this does not resolve the risk of a small number of builders dominating and censoring transactions.

As part of his plan, Buterin proposes FOCIL (Fork-Choice Enforced Inclusion Lists), a mechanism that would allow 16 randomly selected attesters to nominate transactions for inclusion in the next block. Any block that ignores these nominations would be rejected by the network.

Buterin also outlines a more speculative extension he calls 'Big FOCIL', where the inclusion lists grow large enough to cover all transactions, potentially reducing a builder's role to ordering only MEV-relevant transactions like DEX arbitrage.