According to CoinWorld News, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin urges the network community to strengthen its neutrality guarantees. He warned that excessive reliance on a few block builders could expose the blockchain to censorship risks. In an article on X on August 22, Buterin outlined three steps to limit centralization pressures. He suggested enhancing the public mempool to prevent transaction bottlenecks, developing a distributed block building system, and creating fallback channels for transaction inclusion. Vitalik Buterin defends the Fork-Choice Mandatory Inclusion List (FOCIL) as he believes these measures will ensure that no small group of validators can veto which transactions can be included on-chain. A key part of the Ethereum co-founder's vision is a proposal called Fork-Choice Mandatory Inclusion List (FOCIL). According to Buterin, the main proposer still decides the transaction ordering, but the other 16 proposers act as auxiliary proposers, and the transactions they select must appear in the block. Unlike the main proposer, these auxiliary participants do not have to take on the heavy computational workload of full block production. This lighter responsibility makes their roles easier to adopt by a broader pool of validators. The Ethereum co-founder stated that this design could extend to smart contract wallets and privacy protocols, thereby helping to reduce reliance on centralized intermediaries. Legal arguments against FOCIL Buterin's suggestion is a response to prominent Ethereum developer Ameen Soleimani, who argued that FOCIL could have unintended consequences for US-regulated validators. Soleimani highlighted the example of Tornado Cash, where nearly 90% of validators previously avoided handling related transactions. This exclusion slowed settlement times from about 15 seconds to over two minutes but ultimately still allowed transactions to clear. He believes this compromise allowed US operators to avoid potential legal liability while ensuring that other operators eventually incorporated it. According to Soleimani, FOCIL would change this status quo by mandating validators to include flagged transactions. He argues this could expose participants to lawsuits. He warned that US regulators might target validators, witnesses, and even developers who design systems that enforce such mandatory inclusion. The Ethereum developer also warned that courts are unlikely to recognize the distinction between proposers and auxiliary witnesses, making all parties susceptible to enforcement penalties. Aside from legal liabilities, Soleimani also questioned the long-term sustainability of FOCIL. He stated that the current design relies on validators handling disputed transactions out of 'altruism.' However, it does not provide clear incentives or safeguards to balance the risks. Soleimani believes that without these mechanisms, the proposal may prove impractical in practice.

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