Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin believes that solo validators who choose not to include certain transactions should “be tolerated” to prevent the Ethereum community from becoming the “morality police.”
Vitalik Buterin made the comment in response to a Twitter poll by user “latetot.eth,” discussing a hypothetical scenario in which a validator censors a transaction that doesn’t align with their ideals.
The thread, posted on October 17, asked what should happen if a lone validator, in one country at war with another, decides not to process a block because it includes donations to the opposing military.
I’m a solo home validator in Country A. We are at war w Country B, and I decide that I’m not going to include donations to their military when it’s my turn to make a block. This validator should:
— latetot.eth (@latetot) October 16, 2022
According to the co-founder of Ethereum, the response to a case of censorship should be in line with the level of violation.
The post attracted considerable attention, as Vitalik explained in the thread that any other response could lead to turning the Ethereum community into a morality police:
I would say “be tolerated”. Slashing or leaking or socially coordinated anything should only be considered for massive reorging of other people’s blocks, not making wrong choices about what to put in your own.
Any other answer risks turning ETH community into morality police
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) October 17, 2022
In Ethereum’s proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus, validators decide which transactions to include in their blocks, if any. PoS is a modern consensus method that powers decentralized finance (DeFi) projects and other cryptocurrencies.
Validators are allowed to decide what transactions to include in a block. what we shouldnt do, is encourage staking services like Exchanges or Lido that are so huge and centralized that they can easily be coerced into censoring by governments or other third party agents.
— mao (@5t4rman) October 17, 2022
Also responding to the thread, Martin Köppelmann, co-founder of Gnosis and a long-time developer of Ethereum decentralized applications, said that he was okay with tolerating a validator in that situation, while also warning of increased MEV censorship in Ethereum after The Merge.
For the record, in this specific poll, I would also vote for “tolerate”. But IMO the quick roll-out of MEV-boost in hindsight was a mistake and should have been done more diligently to prevent a situation where the content curation of 1 entity currently affects 52% of all blocks.
— Martin Köppelmann (@koeppelmann) October 17, 2022
Although the thread talks about a hypothetical scenario, concerns about censorship in the Ethereum network increased last week, as 51% of Ethereum blocks complied with the regulations of the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the United States from October 14, while MEV-Boost relays take the market share one month after The Merge.
MEV-Boost relays are centralized entities that act as trusted mediators between block producers and creators. All Ethereum PoS validators can outsource their block production to other builders. Due to Ethereum’s upgrade to a PoS consensus, MEV-Boosts have been enabled for a more representative distribution of block proponents, rather than a small pool of miners under the proof-of-work (PoW) consensus.
As noted in a recent op-ed by Slava Demchuk, CEO and co-founder of AMLBot, the Ethereum upgrade could bring changes in anti-money laundering (AML) and know-your-customer (KYC) practices in the cryptocurrency industry. cryptocurrencies. He stated:
“U.S. regulators are increasingly expressing concern about the huge sums circulating in DeFi without any controls. Since the Ethereum blockchain serves as the main chain for most tokens, its recent switch from PoW to PoS can be used as an argument to their attempts to influence (at least in part) the decentralized market”.
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