Ethereum Developers Weigh Encrypting the Mempool to Counter Sandwich Bots

According to Arzdigital, published Tuesday, August 18, 2026 (27 Mordad 1405), Ethereum developers are examining a new defense against predatory trading bots that monitor pending transactions in the mempool before they are finalized on the blockchain to front run users, a practice known as a sandwich attack. In this scheme, bots buy ahead of a large detected purchase order and sell immediately after the resulting price move, at the user's expense.

One of the main proposals, EIP-8184, known as LUCID, would require block builders to commit to sealed versions of transactions without knowing their contents, with decryption information released only after a transaction's position in the block is finalized. The proposal's authors say no known encryption scheme currently satisfies both quantum computer resistant security and optimal data size simultaneously, and researchers plan to review alternative proposals as well.