Ethereum wants to hide your trades from bots before they can attack
Ethereum developers are considering an encrypted public mempool to reduce front-running and sandwich attacks caused by transaction visibility before inclusion. Current private relays can hide orders, but they add dependence on intermediaries. A leading idea, EIP-8184 “LUCID,” would let builders commit to sealed transactions with encrypted payloads and a ticket, revealing details only after ordering is fixed. The main challenge is cryptography at Ethereum scale: developers want small keys, non-interactive decryption, no trusted setup, compact ciphertexts, chosen-ciphertext security, and eventual quantum resistance, but no known scheme meets all of those goals. LUCID therefore leaves key release outside core protocol, which raises new trust, reliability, and liability issues if keys are withheld or released late. Other proposals include EIP-8105, which uses a trust graph among providers. Ethereum’s broader roadmap, including FOCIL, also affects how any encrypted mempool design could be deployed.
