Is The Future of Ethereum Centralised and Censored?
About this episode
The episode discusses the implications of EIP-7805 and FOCIL on Ethereum's centralization and censorship risks.
In this episode, host Friederike Ernst is joined by Thomas Thiery, a researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, to discuss EIP-7805 and the implementation of FOCIL (Fork-Choice Enforced Inclusion Lists). Thomas explains how the rise of MEV (Maximal Extractable Value) has created a centralized builder market where a few actors now control over 85% of Ethereum's block production, creating a dangerous bottleneck for censorship. FOCIL addresses this by empowering a decentralized committee of 16 validators to mandate transaction inclusion, making any block that ignores these lists invalid. They explore the "Tornado Cash" moment and the risks of "silent censorship" for competitive or regulatory reasons. Thomas explains why FOCIL intentionally prioritizes the public mempool over MEV-heavy transactions to prevent the system from being co-opted. Finally, the conversation looks at the future of the Ethereum roadmap, including the Osaka fork and the technical trade-offs between inclusion lists and long-term privacy solutions like encrypted mempools. Topics 00:00 Intro & FOCIL 04:15 MEV & Centralization 09:30 The Builder-Searcher Pipeline 15:00 Silent Censorship Risks…
More episodes of Epicenter - Learn about Crypto, Blockchain, Ethereum, Bitcoin and Distributed Technologies
- Institutional-grade yield on USD, BTC, and Gold?
- Inside Nansen's AI Trading Agent Platform
- Agentic AI Takes Crypto to the Next Level?
- Should All Your Financial Assets be on Blockchain?
- Something better than USDC for your Ethereum?
- How Will Stablecoins Replace Traditional Banking
Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the Epicenter - Learn about Crypto, Blockchain, Ethereum, Bitcoin and Distributed Technologies podcast page.