# Update 1 This is my first update for the Ethereum Protocol Fellowship - cohort three. In the first week I was exploring possible project ideas. My previous experience with Ethereum is mainly related to the EVM and Ethereums security. But since this is a learning opportunity I wanted to do something out of my comfort zone. Since one of the biggest concerns I have with Ethereum right now is base layer censorship and builder centralization due to economies of scaling. Therefore I wanted to explore ideas in those directions. I discussed some ideas with Alex Stokes. Those ideas include: Partial Block Auctions to constrain the power the builder currently has, trust-less searcher to builder connection and a protocol for a decentralized builder. ## Partial Block Auctions: - Partial Block Auctions wouldn't directly solve the problem of builder centralization but would mitigate some of the concerns with a centralized builder censoring blocks - This would result in builders only partially deciding what goes into a block and where - One example would be an inclusion list which is a list of transaction that the proposer demands from the block builder to be included in the block - [How much can we constrain builders without bringing back heavy burdens to proposers?](https://ethresear.ch/t/how-much-can-we-constrain-builders-without-bringing-back-heavy-burdens-to-proposers/13808) - The project idea would be to create a specification of a fitting approach and prototype it in e.g. mev-boost ## Trust-less searcher to builder connection - At the moment the searcher is trusting the builder not to steal their mev opportunities - A decentralized builder protocol would need this as a prerequisite ## Decentralized builder protocol - [Some decentralizing the builder ideas](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAgrIdyWIqc&t=927s) # Further Reading/watching material - [How much can we constrain builders without bringing back heavy burdens to proposers?](https://ethresear.ch/t/how-much-can-we-constrain-builders-without-bringing-back-heavy-burdens-to-proposers/13808) - [Talk: MEV Utopia and Dystopia](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuMkr5AnUvI&t=854s) - [Talk: Block building after the Merge](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KP5ppCRH0iM) - [Talk: MEV-Boost, How Does it Work & What’s Missing](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PS9SlHGJlrU) - [Talk: MEV-boost, PBS, Danksharding... How do the pieces fit together](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OD54WfVuDWw&t=670s) - [Censorship Resistance: crlists in mev-boost](https://github.com/flashbots/mev-boost/issues/215) - [PBS Censorship Resistance](https://notes.ethereum.org/@vbuterin/pbs_censorship_resistance) - [Talk: EigenLayr: Permissionless Feature Addition to Ethereum](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01xDSwMO5U4) - [Themis: Fast, Strong Order-Fairness in Byzantine Consensus](https://eprint.iacr.org/2021/1465.pdf) - [MPC on Ethereum](https://ethresear.ch/t/mpc-on-ethereum/311) - [Talk: Censorship Resistance Via Restaking](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywJNXIUSqOw) - [Unbundling PBS: Towards protocol-enforced proposer commitments (PEPC)](https://ethresear.ch/t/unbundling-pbs-towards-protocol-enforced-proposer-commitments-pepc) # Next steps My goal within the following two weeks is to first narrow down the project ideas further and then decide upon and formalize a concrete project.