Ethereum Researchers Map the Next Scaling Round, and How to Keep It Censorship-Resistant

Core researchers published two proposals that together outline the engineering agenda for Ethereum's coming upgrades. The first repurposes FOCIL, the Fork-Choice-enforced Inclusion Lists design, as a way for users to force a transaction onto a layer-2 network when an operator tries to exclude it. The mechanism adapts a censorship-resistance idea built for the base layer into a guarantee for the networks built on top of it.

The second post, "Scaling in Hegota", works through what the network must change to keep raising the gas limit after the planned Glamsterdam upgrade. It bases the analysis on the cost of a basic transfer, the 21,000-gas baseline, and asks how execution and bandwidth can grow without overwhelming the operators who run network nodes.

The two proposals address the same trade-off from different directions. Raising throughput tends to concentrate block production among well-resourced operators, which is exactly where censorship becomes possible. A forced-inclusion path offsets that risk and keeps capacity gains from gradually weakening the property that lets anyone transact.

The work is early. FOCIL is at an earlier stage of inclusion than the features it would depend on, and Hegota is a future upgrade still being defined. The activity matters as an indication of where the protocol's development is focused, with layer-2 networks now holding more than $41 billion in value, most of it concentrated on a small number of chains.