Ethereum developers are preparing protocol changes that would make transaction censorship more costly and harder to sustain under the network’s block-building system. The leading proposal, Fork-Choice Enforced Inclusion Lists, or FOCIL, has been selected as a consensus-layer “Headliner” for Ethereum’s planned Hegotá upgrade, moving the idea closer to client implementation and network testing.
FOCIL, tracked as EIP-7805, would give a randomly selected committee of validators the ability to identify valid pending transactions that builders must include. Ethereum’s fork-choice rule—the process validators use to determine which chain head to support—would then enforce those obligations. A block that ignored required transactions could lose validator support, denying its builder the reward associated with producing it.
The proposal addresses a structural consequence of Proposer-Builder Separation, or PBS. Under PBS, specialist builders assemble blocks and arrange their transactions, while the validator selected to propose a block chooses among the bids submitted by those builders. The system was designed to reduce the advantage that large staking operators could gain from sophisticated maximum extractable value, or MEV, infrastructure. It has also concentrated a large share of block construction among professional firms.
That concentration gives a relatively small set of identifiable block builders considerable influence over which transactions reach Ethereum quickly. Builders can face legal, commercial, or compliance pressure to avoid transactions connected to sanctioned addresses or applications such as Tornado Cash. A transaction may be technically valid, adequately funded, and willing to pay a competitive fee, yet remain pending if major builders decline to place it in their blocks.
FOCIL would distribute inclusion decisions
Ethereum’s existing Inclusion List concept gives validators a mechanism to flag transactions that should be included if they satisfy protocol conditions and enough block space is available. FOCIL changes the model by spreading that role across a committee rather than relying on a single block proposer.
Under EIP-7805, committee members would independently monitor the public mempool, where signed transactions wait before being added to blocks. Each member could submit a local inclusion list for its assigned slot. The design aims to preserve a path to inclusion even if a large majority of builders and proposers choose to filter a transaction, provided at least one honest committee member observes and lists it.
The enforcement mechanism is central to the design. Builders could not simply ignore a committee’s list and retain the normal economic benefit of producing a block. Validators checking the chain would reject blocks that failed the inclusion requirements by declining to vote for them through Ethereum’s fork-choice process.
That shifts censorship resistance from an expectation placed on builders to a rule enforced by the consensus layer. Builders would retain substantial control over how transactions are ordered inside a block, including the sequencing decisions that underpin much MEV activity. Their ability to indefinitely exclude eligible public-mempool transactions would be more constrained.
EIP-7805 remains in Draft status. The Hegotá “Scheduled for Inclusion” designation indicates that Ethereum client teams have agreed to pursue implementation and testing work, rather than serving as a final commitment to a mainnet activation date. The proposal would still need to complete engineering, security, and network-testing stages before deployment.
FairFIL focuses on persistent omissions
A separate July 2026 research proposal, Fair Forward Inclusion Lists, or FairFIL, approaches the same problem through a longer-running accountability process. Where FOCIL is designed to force near-term inclusion through fork-choice enforcement, FairFIL would record eligible transactions that builders leave out and carry those obligations into later blocks.
The FairFIL proposal would define a publicly verifiable rule for deciding which mempool transactions should normally have qualified for inclusion in a block. If a builder omitted a qualifying transaction, the builder would disclose it through a FairFIL record. Validators could check whether that record was complete, creating an on-chain trail of transactions that were passed over.
Those omitted transactions would then become priority obligations for subsequent builders. Builders could continue to decide transaction ordering, but they could not repeatedly ignore the same qualifying transactions without consequences. The proposal contemplates escalating penalties for persistent omissions, ranging from forfeiture of a block reward to possible slashing of staked funds in more severe cases.
FairFIL is earlier in Ethereum’s development process than FOCIL. It remains a research design rather than an EIP selected for a specific upgrade, and it would require extensive review before it could enter the formal roadmap. Its value lies in framing censorship as a measurable behavior rather than a difficult-to-prove absence: a builder would need to account for transactions that met the protocol’s eligibility rule but did not appear in its block.
A more visible path for delayed transactions
Neither proposal would guarantee that every submitted transaction confirms immediately. Transactions can remain pending for ordinary reasons, including insufficient fees, nonce conflicts, inadequate balances, failed contract conditions, or network congestion. Inclusion Lists are aimed at a narrower problem: a valid and reasonably priced transaction that has reached the public mempool but is repeatedly excluded by block builders.
For users, the intended change would occur largely below the wallet interface. Sending a transaction would still involve signing it and choosing a gas fee. The difference would be a stronger protocol-level route for transactions that qualify for inclusion rather than reliance on a builder’s private selection policy.
The proposals could also improve transaction-status reporting. Wallets and block explorers could distinguish between a transaction that is simply underpriced and one that has appeared on an Inclusion List or FairFIL record. That would give users a clearer explanation for why an order, transfer, or DeFi interaction has not yet reached the chain.
FOCIL and FairFIL point toward a model in which Ethereum continues to permit specialized, competitive block construction while placing firmer limits on transaction exclusion. The Hegotá work will show whether that protection can be added without creating unacceptable complexity, block-space costs, or new incentives for validators and builders to manipulate the inclusion process.
Want deeper context on Ethereum’s roadmap and upgrades? Explore our guide on the Ethereum Pectra upgrade and its trader impact.
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