TL;DR
- Vitalik unveils FOCIL and EIP-8141 to guarantee censorship resistance at consensus layer.
- FOCIL randomly selects 16 includers and one proposer per block slot.
- EIP-8141 grants first-class status to smart accounts and multi-signature wallets.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin presented details of the next protocol upgrade aimed at guaranteeing censorship resistance at the base network layer. The strategy combines the FOCIL mechanism with improvement proposal EIP-8141, creating a protection system that will operate directly at the consensus layer. Both components will form part of the Hegota upgrade, scheduled for the second half of 2026.
The initiative seeks to transform censorship resistance from an implicit principle into an executable guarantee through code. The current design separates transaction inclusion power from ordering power, eliminating single points of control in the validation process.
FOCIL Breaks Proposer Monopoly with 17 Actors per Block
FOCIL (Fork-Choice Enforced Inclusion Lists) introduces a distributed decision-making model in each block slot. In every interval, the system randomly selects 17 participants: 16 “includers” and one “proposer.” Includers collect and submit transaction lists, while the proposer assembles the final block by selecting and ordering transactions from those lists.
The design guarantees that any transaction included in at least one of the 16 lists will enter the block. Vitalik described the effect as total protection: even if adversarial actors control all block slots during a period, FOCIL ensures rapid incorporation of all valid transactions. Inclusion lists currently occupy about 8 kilobytes, with potential for future expansion.
EIP-8141 Elevates Smart Accounts to First Class
While FOCIL expands entry channels, EIP-8141 ensures various transaction types can use those channels without friction. The proposal grants “first-class citizen” status to smart accounts, including multi-signature wallets, accounts with support for post-quantum signatures, and gas sponsorship mechanisms.
Transactions originating from these accounts access Ethereum’s public mempool directly, without requiring wrapping or intermediaries. The protocol also incorporates native support for privacy protocols, allowing those transactions to flow through the network without additional barriers.
Reflexer Labs, through founder Ameen Soleimani, warned that FOCIL could force U.S. validators to include transactions from OFAC-sanctioned addresses, exposing them to legal risks. He pointed to the judicial prosecution of Tornado Cash developers as a precedent for potential consequences.
Defenders of the mechanism respond that Ethereum’s permissionless design never filtered transactions by origin, and FOCIL simply codifies existing operational reality to protect the network’s fundamental values.
The technical roadmap already defined timelines. Ethereum Foundation researcher Alex Stokes confirmed at a developer meeting that FOCIL will incorporate into the Hegota hard fork during the second half of 2026. Before that, the Glamsterdam upgrade, scheduled for the first semester, will implement capacity improvements such as parallel execution and gas limit increases.
The Ethereum Foundation published its 2026 priorities on February 19, organized into three tracks: scaling, user experience improvement, and base layer hardening. FOCIL constitutes the central component of the third track. With this combination of mechanisms, Ethereum seeks to resolve from the architecture itself the tension between decentralization and regulatory compliance, turning censorship resistance into an irreversible property of the protocol.
