German hosting company Hetzner, which provides cloud services, said that its terms of service prohibit not only mining, but also staking of all crypto assets, including ether.
According to Hetzner, the use of the company’s products for applications even remotely related to crypto assets is not allowed. This is especially critical for the Ethereum community – according to ethernodesHetzner operates roughly 16% of Ethereum nodes hosted in the cloud, second only to Amazon Web Services at 53%.
“Even if you just run one node, we consider it a violation of our Terms of Use. We are aware that there are currently many Ethereum users at Hetzner and we are discussing how best to address this issue.” says in Hetzner’s post.
If the Ethereum community is forced to stop Hetzner’s services, it will jeopardize the health of at least 10% of the network. Some members of the crypto community speculate that Hetzner’s statement was the result of recent U.S. Department of the Treasury sanctions on Tornado Cash.
Hetzner’s announcement has far-reaching implications for the entire cryptocurrency industry. Over 60% of Ethereum nodes are hosted by cloud service providers. If Hetzner’s position is supported by other vendors, such as Amazon Web Services, this can stop or drastically complicate the network.
The next blow could be on decentralization. The forced search for hosting nodes, in particular the purchase of VPS hosting and VDS server services, will not only reduce the possibilities of location and reach, but also call into question how decentralized the blockchain actually is.
Recall that in May last year, Hetzner banned customers from using leased facilities for mining cryptocurrencies due to the increased load on equipment after the launch of the Chia cryptocurrency.
Source: Bits
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