Sybil Attacks on AUCIL

Inclusion lists (ILs) are the talk of the town as a censorship resistance primitive for Ethereum under proposer builder separation (PBS). Two major designs have been developed as per my understanding:

  1. FOCIL, which relies on underlying consensus with fixed slot wise participants and no explicit pricing, and

  2. AUCIL, which is an auction based inclusion list design that relies on economic incentives with strategic participation and price formation.

With FOCIL (EIP-7805) proposed to headline the forthcoming Hegota upgrade, the robustness of IL designs is an immediate concern. It is worth noting that neither design is fully Sybil proof or bribery proof.

FOCIL is inherently sybil resistant at committee selection, but its fee mechanisms can weaken once fake transactions and bribery are allowed. Fortunately, Stouka, Ma and Thiery [1] gave a comprehensive analysis for bribery attacks and safe mechanism design for FOCIL but I do not remember seeing a corresponding analysis for AUCIL.

This blog asks only two questions:

  1. Where can Sybil attacks enter AUCIL and how do they change their censorship guarantees and incentives? and

  2. What would a Sybil proof AUCIL mechanism for Ethereum look like? How can we improve this?

Check it out: Sybil Attacks in Auction Based Inclusion Lists (AUCIL)