Smart contract wallets and privacy protocols increasingly rely on third-party relay services to get transactions included onchain. Relay dependence creates vulnerability because a relay going offline or refusing a specific transaction can leave users without an alternative inclusion path. This centralized chokepoint conflicts with censorship resistance, a core priority for Ethereum’s technical direction. A proposed remedy uses FOCIL and EIP-8141 alongside the Hegota upgrade planned for late 2026. FOCIL introduces a mechanism that randomly selects validators to include transactions for each block slot, making it harder for any actor to control inclusion. EIP-7701 enables native account abstraction for Ethereum wallets, expected with the Hegota fork.
"Smart contract wallets (i.e. crypto accounts controlled by programmable code instead of a standard private key) are becoming increasingly prominent across the Ethereum landscape because they enable multi-signature security, social recovery, and gas sponsorship. Privacy protocols, which obscure transaction details from public view, face a similar constraint because, much like smart contract wallets, they currently depend on third-party relay services to get transactions included onchain."
"Buterin has described this relay dependency as a source of vulnerability and fragility, since if a relay goes offline or if a relay operator refuses to process a specific transaction, the end user has no alternative path to inclusion. Vitalik's comments on smart contract wallets and privacy protocols still relying on third-party relay systems, per X These centralized chokepoints run counter to Ethereum's foundational principle of censorship resistance, one of the two priorities Buterin has named as central to the Ethereum Foundation's narrowed technical mission going forward."
"The solution Buterin outlined involves two Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs), the standard mechanism through which protocol changes are specified and debated, working alongside a new inclusion mechanism called FOCIL (Fork-choice Enforced Inclusion List). FOCIL was officially scheduled for inclusion in the upcoming Hegota upgrade targeting late 2026, introducing a mechanism that randomly selects validators to act as transaction includers for each block slot. That randomness makes it structurally difficult for any actor to"
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