#深度创作营 Ethereum's "Heart Bypass": Vitalik Launches a Cleanup Campaign Against Wall Street Algorithms

If you take a quick look at Etherscan right now, you'll find a chilling fact: at this very moment, the so-called "global decentralized computing platform" Ethereum is actually being steered by only two and a half "people." This sounds like a bad joke, but the data doesn't lie. Over the past week, block builders Beaverbuild and Titan Builder, like voracious whales, have packaged over 50% and sometimes up to 80% of the blocks.
What does this mean? It means that if you initiate a transaction on the chain, your so-called "decentralized freedom" is actually determined by the algorithms of these two companies. This isn't Web3; it's essentially a Nasdaq high-frequency trading dark pool disguised as blockchain. Vitalik Buterin has clearly also realized this. His recent proposal for PBS (Proposer-Builder Separation) is no longer a gentle technical upgrade but a surgical operation targeting these invisible oligarchs, even a "heart bypass" to uproot vested interests.
Invisible Taxes and On-Chain Casinos: The Greedy Logic of MEV
This story starts with money, specifically money you can't see on your bill. After Ethereum transitioned to the PoS mechanism, mining with GPUs was no longer necessary, but greed didn't disappear—it just shifted its battleground. Today, Ethereum is like a busy stock exchange, and "block builders" are the super market makers here. They possess a god-like privilege called MEV (Maximum Extractable Value).
Simply put, when you want to buy a token on Uniswap, these builders can see your intent milliseconds faster than you.
Then, an absurd scene unfolds: before your transaction even hits the chain, the builder's bots buy in first to push up the price. After you buy at a high price, they sell it back to you at a profit. This "sandwich attack" is like ordering lobster at a restaurant, and the waiter, hearing your order, rushes into the kitchen to buy the last lobster and then marks up the price by 20% before selling it to you. This isn't just disgusting; it's outright robbery. The current situation is that whoever has a more ruthless algorithm and can snatch more profits can give more money to validators, thus monopolizing block packaging rights. This creates a deadly vicious cycle: the more money-making the builder, the more monopolized the network becomes, and the easier it is for monopolized builders to make money.
Vitalik's current anger is that this "toxic MEV" is turning Ethereum into an extremely unfriendly dark forest for ordinary users. If left unchecked, Ethereum could ultimately become a private chain controlled by a few Wall Street quant funds.
Surgical Knife and Riot Shield: The Game Theory of PBS
Vitalik's approach to solving this problem is very "engineer thinking," but also cunning in political game theory. His core proposal is to fully implement and strengthen PBS (Proposer-Builder Separation). It's like completely isolating the restaurant owner (proposer) from the chef (builder). Previously, chefs not only cooked but also decided who could dine. Now, the owner is reclaiming power. Under the new design logic, especially with the introduction of concepts like "Inclusion Lists," while complex dishes are still prepared by professional chefs (builders), the owner (proposer/validator) can enforce that certain dishes (user transactions) must be included in the menu.
This move is extremely ruthless. It recognizes that "building blocks" indeed requires highly specialized hardware and algorithms, which ordinary validators can't handle. So, let the professionals do it (tolerating centralization of builders). But through protocol-level code restrictions, it strips builders of the power to "review transactions." If a builder refuses to include a marked transaction (for example, from an address sanctioned by the US OFAC), the entire block is invalidated. This effectively downgrades builders from "powerful controllers" to "pure high-level workers."
Vitalik is essentially telling the giants: you can make money, run algorithm competitions, but don't even think about controlling the network or acting as power agents through transaction censorship. This is a very clever check and balance of power, using code's enforceability to counteract capital's monopoly.
Life-and-Death Race: The Last Line of Defense Against Censorship
Don't think this is just a tech geek's self-indulgence; it concerns Ethereum's survival. As cryptocurrencies enter the traditional financial realm through ETFs, regulatory pressure is tightening. If the right to build blocks becomes highly concentrated in just two or three entities, regulators can simply call the CEOs of these companies or issue subpoenas, and the entire Ethereum network could instantly become a heavily regulated local network. This is no exaggeration. During the Tornado Cash sanctions, over 60% of blocks were actively cooperating with censorship.
Vitalik's renewed emphasis on PBS and decentralized building is actually about constructing an "antifragile system" for Ethereum. By dispersing the power to "pack transactions" to thousands of validators like grains of sand, and leaving only the "ordering" work to a few builders, Ethereum aims to find that golden balance between efficiency and censorship resistance.
If this battle is lost, Ethereum will no longer be the immutable world computer but will become a low-efficiency, expensive AWS cloud service. The fight over block control is, on the surface, an upgrade of code, but in essence, it's the final showdown between crypto punk spirit and Wall Street capital logic. The time left for Vitalik to steer the ship is actually running out.