Ethereum devs lock-in controversial censorship resistance proposal for coming Hegota upgrade

Ethereum’s Hegota upgrade will headline Fork-Choice Enforced Inclusion Lists — or FOCIL — a highly-anticipated yet controversial proposal that stands to boost the network’s censorship resistance.

Alex Stokes, an Ethereum Foundation researcher, confirmed the inclusion in the most recent All Core Devs meeting on Thursday.

FOCIL introduces changes that force Ethereum validators to include each and every transaction submitted to the network — even those sent by Office of Foreign Assets Control-sanctioned addresses.

Proponents say FOCIL is necessary because it guarantees censorship resistance at the protocol level, rather than relying on the decisions of those who build blocks and run validators.

“As we keep scaling, the centralisation force towards sophisticated actors is increasing, and FOCIL prevents these actors from censoring transactions,” Jihoon Song, an Ethereum Foundation researcher, said on the Ready to Merge podcast on February 19.

Ensuring that Ethereum is resistant to censorship, and cannot be controlled by outside forces, is incredibly important to its supporters. It is one of the blockchain’s most fundamental and defining features, and legitimises it as a decentralised, permissionless settlement layer.

Controversial upgrade

The Hegota upgrade, named by blending the Bogotá Devcon venue and Heze, a star, is scheduled for the second half of 2026.

It will succeed Glamsterdam, Ethereum’s next upgrade, which will headline two proposals: Enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation and Block-Level Access Lists.

Of all the proposals earmarked for Hegota, FOCIL is the most controversial. It was previously pushed back from inclusion in Glamsterdam as developers debated it.

Privacy Pools founder Ameen Soleimani has argued that the benefits of FOCIL are overstated, and it creates legal risks for US-based validators.

When Tornado Cash was placed on the OFAC sanctions list, some 90% of validators declined to include transactions that touched smart contracts linked to the privacy protocol, he said.

As long as a single validator was willing to include those transactions, however, they would eventually settle on Ethereum.

Had US validators been forced to include those transactions, they could have faced the wrath of the US government, Soleimani argued.

Yet many more Ethereum developers argue FOCIL brings more benefits than downsides.

In response to FOCIL’s inclusion in Hegota, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said it will help boost privacy protocols in combination with another proposal called Frame Transactions.

Ethereum layer 2 developer Tim Clancy previously called FOCIL the “single most important [proposal] for Ethereum.”

“It delivers a capability that Ethereum must have to continue delivering on its mission of being the most neutral blockspace,” he wrote on X last year.

Tim Craig is DL News’ Edinburgh-based DeFi Correspondent. Reach out with tips at tim@dlnews.com.