A 'third party' must keep builders and proposers from having too much power.
A 'third party' must be introduced to keep builders and proposers from having too much power.
Buterin's proposal of "partial block auctions" could help to mitigate the risks of censorship on the Ethereum network. This would allow users to sell blocks that they have censored to the highest bidder, in order to incentivize good behavior and prevent bad actors from censoring important information.
In a recent blog post, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin suggested that builders should have a more limited amount of power to prevent ETH censorship post Merge. Instead of letting them have full rein to construct the entire block if they win an auction, builders would have a more limited amount of power. This suggestion is likely to be controversial, as it would constrain builders in a way that many may feel is too restrictive. However, Buterin argues that this is necessary to prevent censorship on the Ethereum network post-Merge. It remains to be seen how this proposal will be received by the Ethereum community.
How to Limit Block Production Power
Buterin believes that builders should retain enough power to be able to reap the majority of benefits associated with proposer/builder separation (PBS). However, he also believes that this power should be weakened to prevent opportunities for abuse.
Inclusion lists, proposer suffixes, and pre-commit proposer suffixes were presented as three ways to limit block production power.
- The Inclusion list paradigm is a simple way to ensure that a block is filled with the transactions that the proposer demands. However, the builder can still engage in some abuse, and there are incentive compatibility issues and extra burdens on proposers.
- I believe that the proposer suffixes are a great alternative to the current system. With this system, the proposer would be able to add any missed transactions to the end of the block, without the builder being able to see them. This would make it much easier for the proposer to keep track of the block, and make sure that all of the transactions are accounted for.
- The Pre-commit proposer suffixes is a great way to fix the MEV opportunities while creating a block. The builder will be able to create the block while the proposer adds the suffix, thereby eliminating the latter's MEV opportunities.
I believe that both the proposer and builder roles should be minimal, as this would allow for a more efficient block production pipeline. However, this would also mean that many other important tasks would be left unallocated. Therefore, the introduction of a "third actor" is inevitable.
Concerns about centralization in the tech industry.
The debate surrounding centralization in the wider community is unlikely to impact Ethereum's core developers, who are focused on improving the current MEV designs to enhance PBS.
There are concerns that the recent merge between Ethereum and Flashbots could lead to centralization of the latter. Data suggests that 83.5% of all relay blocks have been found to be built by Flashbots alone, which could be a single point of failure for the ecosystem.
It is no secret that censorship is a problem in the crypto world. However, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin has proposed a few ways to mitigate this issue. Buterin's first suggestion is to create a decentralized social media platform that is censorship-resistant.
