Vitalik Buterin Links FOCIL And EIP‑8141 As Core Pillars Of Upcoming Hegota Upgrade

In Brief

FOCIL and account abstraction aim to give Ethereum fast, censorship‑resistant transaction inclusion and first‑class smart‑account functionality, forming the core of a fork focused on neutrality, resilience and long‑term scalability.

Ethereum co‑founder Vitalik Buterin said in a recent post on X that there is a connection between FOCIL and account abstraction under EIP‑8141, which builds on the earlier EIP‑7701

Vitalik Buterin explained that EIP‑8141 elevates smart accounts to first‑class status on the network, enabling multisig wallets, quantum‑resistant signatures, key‑rotation mechanisms, gas‑sponsored transactions and privacy‑oriented protocols to submit operations directly on‑chain without additional wrapping layers

FOCIL proposed upgrade, defined as Fork‑Choice Enforced Inclusion Lists under EIP‑7805, complements this by providing a censorship‑resistant inclusion path, allowing any transaction to be added through one of 17 randomly selected actors in each slot

He noted that the combined design offers near‑instant inclusion—typically within one or two slots—even in adversarial conditions.

In its current form, each FOCIL is only 8 kB, though the architecture allows for future expansion so that a significant share of block transactions could be routed through these lists if necessary

Ethereum co-founder compared the approach to multi‑proposer systems, emphasizing that FOCILs do not attempt to control the MEV‑sensitive “last look,” which remains governed by Ethereum’s ePBS mechanism. He argued that even if every slot were controlled by a hostile proposer blocking public mempools or discriminating against certain applications, users would still retain a reliable path to inclusion. While this does not remove centralization risks entirely, it substantially limits the influence of any single proposer.

Hegota To Prioritize Censorship Resistance, Inclusion Guarantees And Stateless Clients

These remarks followed a post from user “soispoke” noting that FOCIL had been selected as a core component of the next fork, signaling Ethereum’s intention to prioritize upgrades that enhance censorship resistance, strengthen inclusion guarantees and reinforce the network’s position as a credibly neutral platform

Vitalik Buterin previously described this direction as an important moment for a community committed to protocol changes aligned with long‑standing cypherpunk principles, while stressing that the work ahead remains important.

A major planned hard-fork upgrade for Ethereum in late 2026, the Hegota fork is generally focused on implementing advanced data structures to reduce the storage and bandwidth requirements for nodes and support stateless clients, easing scalability and decentralization. It’s also expected to include mechanisms like state/history expiry to combat state bloat and improve long-term network efficiency while fitting into Ethereum’s twice-yearly upgrade cadence following the Glamsterdam fork.