Vitalik Buterin Unveils Multi-Stage Plan to Tackle Ethereum Centralization

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has outlined a multi-stage plan to address centralization in block construction and mitigate front-running attacks on the network.

The plan is part of Ethereum's ongoing efforts to improve its scalability and security, particularly with regards to Proposer-Builder Separation (PBS) and MEV (Maximum Extractable Value).

Glamsterdam, expected in the first half of 2026, will introduce enshrined PBS directly into Ethereum's consensus layer, separating the roles of block proposers and builders. However, Buterin argues that this does not resolve the risk of a small number of builders dominating and censoring transactions.

To address this issue, FOCIL (Fork-Choice Enforced Inclusion Lists) will be introduced as part of the Hegota upgrade in 2026. Under FOCIL, 16 randomly selected attesters will nominate transactions to be included in the next block, and any block that ignores them will be rejected by the network.

Buterin also proposed a more speculative extension called '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.