Vitalik Buterin: “The Ethereum community should not turn into the morality police”

The co-founder of Ethereum stated that network validators should be tolerant and not censor transactions that do not conform to their beliefs.

In a series of tweets, Vitalik Buterin stated that the censorship of transactions by the network’s validators should correspond to the level of wrongdoing. If someone has committed a minor offense, then a minor punishment is applied. If the violation is serious, then it must be serious.

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

However, in both cases, it is irresponsible for validators to censor transactions that are inconsistent with beliefs. Validators must be tolerant. Otherwise, their behavior can have serious negative consequences for the Ethereum blockchain ecosystem and turn the community into a “vice police”.

While the thread discusses a hypothetical scenario, concerns about censorship on the Ethereum network are constantly on the rise. According to information According to Mevwatch, about 51% of the blocks of the network were built by the so-called MEV-Boost relays, “compliant with the standards of the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC)”. For example, Flashbots, the largest MEV-Boost relay, refuses to process any transactions related to mixing the Tornado Cash protocol.

Thus, there are relays that reorder transactions in Ethereum blocks and openly declare their intent to censor transactions related to protocols targeted by the US Department of the Treasury.

Earlier, Vitalik Buterin said that Twitter’s anti-fraud system, based on verified accounts with blue checkmarks, has completely failed and requires serious intervention from a “third party”.