Labrys CEO comments on the possibility of Ethereum censorship
According to him, 45% of validators are already compliant with OFAC
More than 25% of blocks are censored
And this figure is growing along with the popularization of MEV-Boost relays
Labrys CEO Lachlan Feeney was interviewed by Cointelegraph today, September 30, where he touched on the topic of Ethereum censorship. According to him, 45% of validators are already compliant with OFAC sanctions, and this figure is growing rapidly.
As a reminder, even before the move to PoS, in August, members of the Ethereum community expressed concerns about OFAC’s policy. Many of the network’s validators and nodes are geographically located in the US, putting the entire blockchain at risk of censorship.
Labrys CEO Lachlan Feeney has only confirmed these concerns. He says the number of blocks affected by censorship is higher than the claimed 25%. And this figure is increasing as the popularity of MEV-Boost repeaters grows.
“The whole problem here is that these guys are paying validators to activate this feature,” Feeney stressed.
MEV-Boost repeaters are subject to US regulation. And those units affected by this feature are actually supervised. Consequently, such validators will comply with the sanctions so that they themselves do not fall under them.
Note that at the end of September Labrys introduced MEV Watch, a programme for ranking validators. It allows the screening of those that are OFAC compliant.
Feeney said that by doing so, the firm aims to raise awareness among community members. He himself, however, avoids giving a clear assessment of the situation.
How does this threaten the ecosystem?
Note that in a worst-case scenario, validators would be forced to discard blocks with “problematic” transactions. This includes, for example, transfers to Tornado Cash.
But even if the network is not completely censored, the speed of transaction validation will drop. This would incur additional costs for prioritisation and, consequently, churn a large number of users.
