Ethereum developers begin debate over Hegota — yet another upgrade

It’s a busy time for Ethereum developers.

Even as they work to finalise the dozen-plus improvements that will be included in the blockchain’s next upgrade, Glamsterdam, they’ve begun debating so-called headliners for the one after that, codenamed Hegota.

Headliners are crucial. Those are the improvements that excite the general public (to the extent the general public cares about Ethereum upgrades).

They are usually so significant that they can be felt by the average user, and they are easy to explain, offering developers a simple way of saying, “here’s how Ethereum got better this year.”

Despite a heated debate over the wisdom of implementing fork-choice inclusion lists, or FOCIL, there seems to be a growing consensus that it will be one of the headliners in Hegota.

FOCIL would eliminate block builders’ ability to censor transactions, by forcing inclusion of every valid transaction in an upcoming block. It’s being pitched as the next step in bolstering Ethereum’s claim to cypherpunk preeminence.

But what might join FOCIL in Hegota? Last Thursday, Ethereum developers heard pitches for other proposed headliners.

Developer Jannik Luhn proposed something called the universal enshrined encrypted mempool, which would allow for encrypted transactions on Ethereum, preventing front-running and sandwich attacks.

“Many users already protect themselves by using private RPCs and trusted builders, which I think proves that there’s user demand,” Luhn said.

“But the way this happens, we think, is problematic because it relies on trusted parties, which is bad for decentralisation and censorship resistance.”

And it would make a nice partner to FOCIL.

“We think this fits very well into a theme of improving credibility, neutrality, and censorship resistance of Ethereum,” Luhn added.

Ethereum Foundation developer Felix Lange proposed something called frame transactions — a new type of transaction that would prepare the blockchain for a post-quantum world and offer a more robust version of account abstraction.

“It’s also for us the most important one, because of the readiness for the post-quantum world,” Lange said.

“We feel like we have to get started with the off-ramp from ECDSA, and in order to do that, we need a comprehensive system that can deal with whatever signature algorithms we want to use.”

ECDSA is the acronym for the quantum-vulnerable cryptography that undergirds Ethereum currently.

One sceptic pointed out that earlier upgrades to enable a form of account abstraction are little-used. But Lange said those had been half-measures that “are not adequate to capture what users really want to do.”

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik joined to throw his support behind the proposal, a somewhat rare occurrence that could sway the outcome of these discussions.

“From a use cases perspective, this does basically satisfy everything that, at least I’ve been pushing for — the entire list of goals of account abstraction,” Buterin said.

Though it too would be a nice complement to FOCIL, quantum resistance was the most important aspect of the proposal, he added.

“It’s the reason why account abstraction of some form is ultimately indispensable,” Buterin said.

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Aleks Gilbert is DL News’ New York-based DeFi correspondent. You can contact him at aleks@dlnews.com.