Briefing
This paper addresses the critical problem of censorship resistance in blockchain protocols, particularly within emerging multi-proposer architectures where transaction fee mechanisms (TFMs) often rely on unproven altruistic behavior. It introduces novel TFMs that rigorously guarantee censorship resistance even when faced with sophisticated bribery attacks, while simultaneously preserving the desirable incentive compatibility properties of established designs like EIP-1559. The foundational breakthrough lies in extending existing TFM models to explicitly account for adversarial bribery and multi-phase transaction inclusion, providing a concrete payment mechanism for Fork-Choice Enforced Inclusion Lists (FOCIL). This new theoretical framework has the profound implication of enabling the design of provably robust and equitable transaction ordering systems, moving beyond reliance on proposer goodwill to secure the integrity of decentralized networks against economic manipulation.
Context
Before this research, a foundational challenge in blockchain design involved ensuring censorship resistance, especially as protocols evolved to include multiple block proposers. Existing multi-proposer schemes, such as Fork-Choice Enforced Inclusion Lists (FOCIL) proposed for Ethereum, often presumed altruistic behavior from proposers or lacked explicit transaction fee mechanisms (TFMs) to counteract economic incentives for censorship. The prevailing theoretical limitation centered on the vulnerability of transaction inclusion to Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) extraction and direct bribery, where a single proposer could be economically incentivized to omit transactions, thereby compromising a core tenet of decentralized systems.
Analysis
The paper’s core mechanism revolves around the strategic design of transaction fee mechanisms (TFMs) that intrinsically incentivize multiple proposers to resist censorship and bribery. It extends the canonical TFM model, originally developed by Roughgarden, to explicitly incorporate the dynamics of a bribing adversary and the complexities of multi-phase transaction inclusion. The new model defines payment rules that ensure proposers, acting rationally, will find it in their economic self-interest to include transactions rather than censor them, even when offered bribes.
This fundamentally differs from previous approaches that either ignored bribery, relied on altruism, or focused solely on single-proposer contexts. The breakthrough is in identifying specific TFM structures that align individual proposer incentives with the collective goal of censorship resistance, thereby securing the integrity of the transaction inclusion process.
Parameters
- Core Concept → Transaction Fee Mechanism Design
- Problem Addressed → Censorship and Bribery Attacks
- Context Protocol → Fork-Choice Enforced Inclusion Lists (FOCIL)
- Incentive Property → EIP-1559 Incentive Compatibility
- Modeling Framework → Extended Roughgarden’s TFM Model
- Key Authors → Aikaterini-Panagiota Stouka, Tim Roughgarden, Barnabé Monnot
- Publication Date → May 19, 2025
Outlook
This research lays critical groundwork for future blockchain architectures, particularly those leveraging multi-proposer designs to enhance decentralization and censorship resistance. The identified TFMs provide a blueprint for implementing robust incentive structures that can effectively counter economic attacks like bribery, ensuring more reliable transaction inclusion. In the next 3-5 years, this theory could unlock truly censorship-resistant block production, fostering a more equitable and predictable on-chain environment. It also opens new avenues for academic inquiry into dynamic incentive mechanisms, the quantification of censorship risk, and the interplay between cryptographic security and economic game theory in complex distributed systems.
