Blob Preconfirmations with Inclusion Lists to Mitigate Blob Contention and Censorship

[Evan-Kim2028]

Hey Julian thanks for your comments. I can address some of your comments:

@Julian

First, contention between blobs stems from too many blobs competing for a scarce protocol product. It is unclear to me how preconfirmations avoid contention since the protocol product is as scarce with this design as without, and bidding is also possible in-protocol.

We see the current in-protocol bidding mechanisms as inadequate to bid effectively for the scarce blobspace. Although bidding is possible in-protocol via the EIP-1559 max priority fee, it does not apply to the EIP-4844 transaction blob base fee for example. Furthermore in times of high volatility, in order to update a bid, the entire transaction must be resubmitted, which is very costly and not recommended. In contrast, submitting a preconfirmation bid only requires the blob sender to update their bid amount without having to resubmit the entire blob transaction into the mempool.

@Julian

Secondly, inclusion lists improve censorship resistance by tapping into the entropy that a decentralized validator set creates. Since proposers outsource their preconfirmation provider duties to a leader in this design, it is not clear to me that this design also taps into the entropy of the validator set. Wouldn’t the preconfirmation providers also become specialized entities, as in mev-boost?

The design has the same trust assumptions that currently exist with mev-boost today because it is an out-of-protocol design

@Julian

In general, I think this design is very interesting but looks more like a parallel slot auction in which the proposer sells its rights to the preconfirmation leader. Therefore it may be more appropriate to see this not as an inclusion list but as a specific proposer commitment that is realized via a PEPC-like system. Parallel block auctions in PEPC may benefit censorship resistance, but that is because multiple parties are involved with block construction.

Thank you for sharing, that was an interesting read! I think it is accurate to describe this as a slot auction. However, wouldn’t the current inclusion list design being discussed under EIP-7547 also be considered a slot auction as well?