“Ethereum Is Going Hard”: Vitalik Buterin Endorses Aggressive Censorship-Resistance Upgrade
Ethereum’s core developers are preparing one of the most politically charged changes to the protocol in years, and Vitalik Buterin is firmly on board. The centerpiece of the upcoming “Hegota” upgrade, planned for the second half of 2026, is a mechanism known as Fork-Choice Enforced Inclusion Lists (FOCIL) – formalized as EIP-7805.
The goal is blunt and uncompromising: make it technically impossible for Ethereum’s consensus layer to cooperate with censorship. In Buterin’s words, Ethereum is “going hard” on its cypherpunk roots rather than softening under regulatory pressure.
What FOCIL Actually Does
At its core, FOCIL changes how the network decides which blocks are considered canonical. Today, validators propose blocks and the fork-choice rule selects the “best” chain based on weight and finality. With FOCIL, the fork-choice rule is extended to care explicitly about transaction inclusion.
The idea is simple but powerful:
– Certain transactions – those sitting in the public mempool and not yet included in a block – can be placed on “inclusion lists.”
– If a validator proposes a block but *skips* valid transactions that appear on these lists without a valid technical reason, that block can be rejected by the fork-choice rule.
– The chain effectively “forks away” from censorious behavior, favoring blocks that respect the inclusion lists.
This design guarantees that any valid, public-mempool transaction is included within a bounded number of slots, even if some validators attempt to exclude or delay it. Instead of merely hoping most validators act honestly, FOCIL encodes censorship resistance directly into consensus.
Why Ethereum Is Doing This Now
The push for enforced inclusion is a direct reaction to real-world events. Since the rise of OFAC-related sanctions and compliance pressures, some Ethereum validators and block builders have filtered out transactions associated with sanctioned addresses or controversial activity.
While the base protocol never mandated such filtering, the optics and practical impact were clear: under certain conditions, Ethereum could begin drifting toward de facto censorship if key infrastructure actors coordinated or over-complied.
Developers and researchers began exploring ways to:
– Prevent large validator sets from silently colluding to exclude politically sensitive transactions.
– Keep the “neutral base layer” ethos alive even as regulation tightens.
– Stop censorship before it becomes systemic, rather than reacting after trust has already eroded.
FOCIL is the most forceful response so far. It doesn’t merely discourage censorship – it makes it structurally unprofitable and consensus-incompatible.
EIP-7805 and the Hegota Upgrade
EIP-7805, the specification behind FOCIL, has been selected as the flagship consensus-layer change for Hegota, Ethereum’s next major network upgrade after the current roadmap items are completed.
Key points about Hegota and EIP-7805:
– Timeline: Developers are currently targeting the second half of 2026 for mainnet deployment, following testnet trials and security reviews.
– Scope: Hegota will include a bundle of changes, but FOCIL is the political and philosophical centerpiece.
– Objective: Lock in protocol-level censorship resistance, so that no coalition of validators can selectively suppress valid transactions without being punished at the consensus level.
By putting EIP-7805 into a named upgrade, Ethereum’s core team is signaling that this is not a fringe research idea – it’s a strategic priority.
How Inclusion Lists Work in Practice
Inclusion lists can be thought of as “must-not-ignore” reminders for validators. The workflow looks roughly like this:
1. A valid transaction is broadcast to the public mempool.
2. After remaining unconfirmed for long enough, it can be added to an inclusion list.
3. Validators proposing new blocks are expected to include transactions from these lists if they are still valid and fit within block limits.
4. If a validator publishes a block that ignores listed transactions without a valid reason, the fork-choice rule may reject that block in favor of a competing one that includes them.
Critically, FOCIL does not require validators to include *every* transaction instantly, nor does it abolish fee markets or blocksize limits. It simply ensures that:
– No valid, public transaction can be blackholed indefinitely.
– Censorship attempts result in economic and consensus penalties for the censoring party.
In other words, freedom of transaction isn’t just a social promise; it is baked into the chain’s core logic.
Vitalik Buterin’s Position
Buterin has long argued that a credible public blockchain must be neutral and resistant to coercion, even when that stance is uncomfortable. His support for FOCIL reflects that line of thinking:
– He sees protocol-level censorship resistance as non-negotiable – especially for a system that aspires to support financial and political use cases outside traditional institutions.
– In his framing, Ethereum must “go hard” now to avoid a slow erosion of its values amid rising regulatory and geopolitical pressure.
– The alternative – tolerating partial censorship at the edges – risks transforming Ethereum into just another permissioned settlement network over time.
By backing EIP-7805, Buterin is effectively betting the network’s future on strong-form neutrality rather than regulatory appeasement.
Why This Is Controversial
For all its ideological clarity, FOCIL is far from universally loved. The proposal has sparked debate on several fronts:
1. Operational Complexity for Validators
Validators will need to respect inclusion lists, handle more edge cases, and ensure their block construction logic doesn’t accidentally trigger consensus penalties. That may require new software, auditing, and monitoring infrastructure. Smaller operators worry about added complexity and the risk of misconfiguration.
2. Legal and Compliance Tensions
Validators operating in strict jurisdictions may face a conflict: local law might encourage or demand that they avoid certain transactions, while the protocol forces them to include them or risk losing rewards and consensus alignment. This tension could push some regulated actors off the network – which some see as a feature, others as a bug.
3. Game-Theoretic and MEV Dynamics
Ethereum’s block production is already intertwined with MEV (maximal extractable value) ecosystems. FOCIL alters the incentives and might open new strategic behaviors, such as:
– Validators trying to avoid proposing blocks at certain times to dodge contentious transactions.
– Complex interactions between inclusion lists and off-chain builder markets.
4. Philosophical Concerns
Some critics argue that “enforced inclusion” is itself a kind of central planning inside the protocol, and that a truly free system should not dictate which transactions *must* be included – only which ones *can* be. Supporters counter that without such guarantees, “freedom to transact” becomes meaningless under coordinated censorship.
Why Censorship Resistance Matters So Much
Censorship resistance is not a purely ideological stance; it has practical implications for Ethereum’s long-term viability:
– Credible Neutrality: Protocols that can be bent by political or commercial pressure lose the trust of users who depend on them for sensitive use cases – from capital controls evasion to whistleblowing to controversial fundraising.
– Network Effects: Developers and capital migrate to platforms they believe will behave predictably under stress. If Ethereum is seen as weak or pliable, rival L1s or alternative settlement layers might gain ground.
– Systemic Risk: Partial or sporadic censorship can fragment liquidity, create uncertainty about settlement finality, and distort DeFi markets that depend on predictable transaction processing.
By elevating censorship resistance to a design constraint equal in importance to scalability or cost, Hegota and FOCIL aim to safeguard Ethereum’s role as a trust-minimized, global base layer.
How This Could Change the Validator Landscape
If EIP-7805 ships in its current spirit, the validator set itself may evolve:
– More Ideologically Aligned Validators: Operators who are comfortable with strong neutrality may gain relative influence as purely “compliance-driven” players reconsider their involvement.
– Shift to Friendlier Jurisdictions: Some staking operations might move infrastructure or legal presence to regions that are more tolerant of protocol-level neutrality.
– Greater Emphasis on Client Diversity and Testing: As consensus rules become more nuanced, the ecosystem’s existing push for client diversity and robust testing will become even more critical to avoid consensus splits.
In the long run, supporters argue this will make Ethereum *more* decentralized and robust, even if there is some short-term disruption.
Implications for Users and Developers
For everyday users, the most important consequence of FOCIL is straightforward:
– If a transaction is valid and broadcast to the public mempool, it *will* be included within a predictable timeframe, regardless of who disapproves of it.
For developers, especially those building at the edges of legality or in politically sensitive contexts, this matters even more:
– Financial primitives, privacy tools, and governance mechanisms can be designed with greater confidence that the base layer will not arbitrarily refuse to process them.
– Protocols that depend on liveness guarantees – such as liquidations, cross-chain bridges, and complex DeFi workflows – may see stronger safety properties, since validators cannot indefinitely stonewall certain operations.
The user experience on the surface may not change dramatically day-to-day, but the *assurances* behind that experience would become significantly stronger.
What to Watch Between Now and 2026
Before Hegota hits mainnet, several milestones and open questions will shape how FOCIL actually looks in production:
– Refinement of EIP-7805: The exact rules, thresholds, and protections against abuse of inclusion lists need thorough review and iteration.
– Testnet Deployments: Multi-client testing will be essential to surface edge cases, performance concerns, and any risk of unintentional forks.
– Ecosystem Tooling: Validators, staking providers, and infrastructure teams will need clear tooling, documentation, and monitoring solutions to handle inclusion lists safely.
– Regulatory Feedback Loops: As the design hardens, regulators and institutional actors may respond – potentially influencing how some validation businesses position themselves.
If these steps go smoothly, Hegota could mark one of the most significant ideological and technical moments in Ethereum’s history.
A Deliberate Move Back to Cypherpunk Roots
With FOCIL and the Hegota upgrade, Ethereum is making a conscious choice. Instead of drifting toward a compliant, permissioned future, the protocol is doubling down on being a neutral, censorship-resistant settlement layer – even at the cost of controversy, complexity, and potential regulatory friction.
Buterin’s endorsement underlines that this is not a minor tweak, but a statement of identity. For a network that began as a cypherpunk experiment and grew into a global financial substrate, Hegota is a message to both users and adversaries: Ethereum intends to remain a place where valid transactions cannot be quietly erased.