Vitalik Buterin Proposes to Counteract Ethereum Censorship

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin suggests “partial block auctions”, to reduce the possibility of censorship. Following Merge’s switch to proof-of-stake (PoS), worries about Ethereum censorship have become overly prevalent.

To avoid centralization and other forms of manipulation of the Ethereum economic system, Vitalik Buterin seeks to limit the authority of builders.

As developers try to prevent Ethereum censorship after the Merge, Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, advocates preventing builders from producing complete blocks.

He thinks partial block auctions, which let builders select the first half of the block and not the second, can further decentralize block manufacturing.

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Builders will, however, have sufficient capacity to virtually fully extract all MEV and to benefit from additional proposer/builder separation advantages (PBS). In fact, builders can be rearranged, placed in advance, added, and even restricted.

Three options are put out by Vitalik Buterin as potential restrictions on block production power. It contains Proposer suffixes, Inclusion lists, and pre-commit proposer suffixes.

Inclusion lists: Unless the builder fills a block with additional transactions, the proposer provides a list of transactions to be included in the block.

The disadvantages, however, consist of concerns with incentive compatibility, added demands on proposers, abuse like sandwich attacks, and partial enshrining for account abstraction.

Proposers pre-commits to a Merkle tree or KZG, as well as any other transactions they want to include in the block, using the suffix “pre-commit”. A proposer adds the suffix after a builder creates the block. This eliminates a proposer’s MEV chances while addressing other flaws.

To avoid centralization, according to Vitalik Buterin, power should be restricted for both proposers and builders, and a third party should be included in the block production process. As a result, it will lessen Ethereum censorship.