Buterin Says Censoring Solo Validators Should Be Tolerated

When asked about a hypothetical situation, Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum said that censorship should sometimes be okay.

Vitalik Buterin, one of the people who started Ethereum, thinks that solo validators who choose not to include some transactions should be “tolerated” so that the Ethereum community doesn’t become the “morality police.”

Vitalik Buterin said this in response to a latetot.eth Twitter poll about a hypothetical situation in which a validator blocks a transaction that goes against their beliefs.

The thread, which was posted on October 17, asked what should happen if a single validator in a country at war with another decides not to process a block because it includes donations to the opposing military force.

“I’m a solo home validator in Country A. We’re at war with Country B, so when it’s my turn to make a block, I decide not to include donations to their military. This validator should:” – latetot.eth (@latetot) on October 16, 2022

The co-founder of Ethereum says that the answer to a censorship case should match the level of violation.

Vitalik said in the thread that any other answer could turn the Ethereum community into a morality police force, so the post got a lot of attention.

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“I’d say “be put up with.” Slashing, leaking, or anything else that is socially coordinated should only be used to change a lot of other people’s blocks, not to change what you put in your own. Any other answer risks turning the ETH community into morality police” – Vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) on October 17, 2022

In Ethereum proof-of-stake (PoS), validators decide which transactions, if any, to include in their blocks. PoS is a modern consensus method that powers decentralized finance (DeFi) projects and cryptocurrencies.

“Validators can choose which transactions to put in a block. We shouldn’t promote staking services like Exchanges or Lido that are so big and centralized that governments or other third parties can easily force them to censor. “– mao (@5t4rman) on October 17, 2022

Martin Koppelmann, the co-founder of Gnosis and a long-time Ethereum decentralized application developer, also replied to the thread. He said that he agreed with letting the validator stay in that situation, but he warned that MEV-boost censorship in Ethereum would be getting worse after the Merge.

“For the record, I would also vote for “tolerate” in this poll. But in hindsight, I think that the quick rollout of MEV-boost was a mistake and that it should have been done more carefully to avoid the current situation where the content curation of one entity affects 52% of all blocks.” – Martin Koppelmann (@koeppelmann) on October 17, 2022.

Even though the thread talks about a hypothetical situation, worries about censorship on the Ethereum network grew last week. As of Oct. 14, 51% of Ethereum blocks meet the standards of the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), as MEV-Boost relays take over market share one month after the Merge.

MEV-Boost relays are centralized entities that act as trusted middlemen between block producers and builders. All Ethereum PoS validators can outsource their block production to other builders (PoW).

In a recent opinion piece, Slava Demchuk, CEO and co-founder of AMLBot, said that the Ethereum upgrade could change the way the cryptocurrency industry does Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC). He said:

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“U.S. Regulators are getting more and more worried about the huge amounts of money that are moving freely in DeFi. As the Ethereum blockchain is the main chain for most tokens, the recent change from PoW to PoS could be used as proof that they want to control (at least some of) the decentralized market.”

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