EIP-8184: LUCID encrypted mempool

aelowsson · March 18, 2026, 1:42pm

Discussion topic for EIP-8184: LUCID encrypted mempool (PR).

Description

Public encrypted mempool for commit-before-reveal inclusion of MEV-sensitive transactions, without enshrining a specific encryption scheme.

Relevant resources

LUCID encrypted mempool research post.
Original research post for Sealed Transactions, with comments about extension to encrypted mempool.
Research post introducing auditable builder bids (ABBs).
EIP-8105 with associated research post by Jannik Luhn. The idea of executing the decrypted transactions in the context of the commitment block was derived from this research.
Post on Why Ethereum needs an Encrypted Mempool by Julian Ma.
FAQ maintained by Shutter.

Special thanks to the Shutter team including Jannik Luhn and Luis Bezzenberger; the EF cryptography team, including Benedikt Wagner and Gottfried Herold; and Potuz.

Note that some details regarding resource pricing in the EIP still remain to be settled.

Abstract

This EIP specifies LUCID, a mechanism for carrying encrypted transactions through Ethereum’s public inclusion pipeline while keeping their contents hidden until after the scheduling decision has been fixed. By requiring commitment before reveal and delaying decryption until that point, LUCID protects MEV-sensitive order flow, limits probabilistic front-running by minimizing pre-execution information leakage, and broadens the practical censorship resistance of inclusion lists. The design remains open to different off-protocol decryption schemes, including trustless self-decryption, rather than coupling Ethereum to a single enshrined cryptographic construction.

aelowsson · August 14, 2026, 2:20pm

Over the spring and summer, we have been studying the design space further.

The main forum is the bi-weekly Encrypt the Mempool technical meetings. These meetings have focused on avenues for removing optionality, but no convincing alternative design has yet to emerge. The main issue is the required PQ cryptography.

A prominent critique of commit-reveal schemes was posted in June by Gottfried.

In the other direction, a critique of threshold-committee schemes has also recently been shared by Jannik.

Jannik has suggested a variant of the trusted set in EIP-8105: a Key Publisher Whitelist maintained by validators. A hidden benefit relative to the trusted set is that it open up for easier CR via FOCIL. However, I wanted to explore if we could still achieve CR under a trusted set. One avenue is to have validators construct the weighted longest path of the trust DAG when enforcing the ILs.