Right of Audience: a case for FOCIL | Sina Mahmoodi (Berlin Ethereum Day, June 2026)

Wed, Sep 2, 2026, 12:00 AM

Ethereum was built to be neutral. Yet, at its peak, 79% of Ethereum blocks were committed to censoring valid transactions after Tornado Cash was added to the OFAC list. Today, a handful of builders and relays still carry the vast majority of inclusion decisions, while 900,000 validators have no real say over the blocks they sign. This talk makes the case that censorship resistance has to be a property of the protocol, not a market outcome. Sina Mahmoodi (Ethereum Foundation) walked through FOCIL (EIP-7805): how a randomly selected committee of validators per slot can force-include transactions, why a 1-of-N honesty assumption is enough, and how the fork-choice rule enforces it. Every valid transaction has a right of audience, because every validator has a voice. The Berlin Ethereum Day was a one-day event held on June 15, 2026 during the Berlin Blockchain Week. The full-day program brought together speakers from the Ethereum Foundation and the broader FOSS, privacy, and security ecosystems to explore the future of Ethereum and self-sovereign technologies - from technical direction and core values to the challenges and opportunities ahead. Future Meetups and Events: https://www.meetup.com/berlin-ethereum-meetup/ More information on the speakers and the agenda: https://berlinethereumday.com/