Discussion on Ethereum's Encrypted Mempool Underway

Ethereum (ETH) is conducting discussions on encrypted mempool to address the issue of bot attacks resulting from transaction exposure in the public mempool. The core idea is to conceal transaction details and disclose them only after block inclusion decisions are made. The EIP-8184 document presents the Lucid (LUCID) encrypted mempool as a draft core EIP, outlining a structure where sealed transactions are propagated in the public network, and builders commit first before revealing the decryption key. The mempool is a space where transactions that are not included in a block wait, and EIP-8184 addresses the issue of protecting MEV-sensitive order flow. MEV refers to the value that can be extracted through transaction order manipulation, and if transaction details are revealed, bots can exploit price differences to induce unfavorable trades. Lucid relies on EIP-7805, or FOCIL, which is a censorship-resistant mechanism that ensures specific transactions are not excluded from blocks. However, technical issues remain, and EIP-8184 requires several conditions such as small public keys and asymmetric decryption, but no configurations satisfy these requirements. There are also concerns regarding the responsibility of key issuers, and EIP-8105 has proposed preventing front-running through encrypted mempool, but it is still in the draft stage. The Ethereum security roadmap has set FOCIL as a major task for 2027, and research on encrypted mempool continues. Public discussions have not yet reached a conclusion, and commercialization timelines have not been established.