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The Ethereum community, which is known for a sunny rainbow-and-unicorns vibe, is unusually serious as of late. Following a recent move by the U.S. Treasury Department to target a batch of crypto-related open source code, one word keeps coming up in Ethereum circles: censorship.

The concern surfaced earlier this month when the Treasurys Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned Tornado Cash, an Ethereum-based cryptocurrency mixer that allows users to obfuscate transactions, and a series of Ethereum addressesbarring all Americans from interacting with both the mixer and the addresses.

According to Treasury officials, Tornado Cash has laundered over $7 billion in cryptocurrency since its creation in 2019, and has become a favorite destination for the infamous North Korean hacking outfit known as the Lazarus Group.

The Tornado Cash announcement marked a watershed moment for the crypto world. Although the Treasury has long targeted financial criminals and those who support terrorist activity, its unusual for the agency to sanction a piece of technologyin this case a mixerdirectly.

All of this set off concern within the Ethereum community about whether the blockchain is resistant to government censorshipconcern that has only increased as Ethereum approaches its highly anticipated merge upgrade next month.

Though applications existing on Ethereum can be censored, as weve seen with Tornado Cash, whether the Ethereum blockchain itself can be subject to censorship has been a topic of debate, especially with Ethereums upcoming merge.

Thats because the merge will shift Ethereum from a proof of work (PoW) consensus model to proof of stake (PoS), and, in turn, validators will have the responsibility of creating new blocks on-chain and verifying transactions, rather than miners. To become a validator, one must deposit 32 Ethera sum, currently worth around $50,000, that is intended to ensure that participants have a stake in the success of the network.

A single entity, however, can also run multiple validators, so long as the entity can afford it, and in doing so arguably garner more control. As a result, some within the Ethereum community have become concerned about the emergence of powerful, centralized entities after the mergeentities that could be pliant when it comes to carrying out government censorship requests.

Those concerned about censorship have raised various hypotheticals: Might a validator refuse to confirm a block to the Ethereum blockchain because it contains Tornado Cash transactions? Would fear of legal repercussions lead them to ignore or reject such blocks?

It is unknown whether any of this will happen, or whether the government will target validators, but such questions have been at the center of debate onlineespecially as it circulated on crypto Twitter that 66% of the Beacon Chain [or proof-of-stake chain] validators will adhere to OFAC regulations, including Coinbase and Kraken.

Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin weighed in on this discussion himself, and signaled his support in slashing the stake of any validators that censor the Ethereum protocol if asked by U.S. regulators.

Even Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong suggested hed rather stop the staking business of his cryptocurrency exchange than comply with any potential censorship.

Another concern post-merge involves MEVmaximal extractable value (formerly miner extractable value)and potential MEV-Boost issues, and how these could increase the potential for censorship.

MEV describes the profit a validator can earn by selecting or reordering transactions within blocks, while MEV-Boost is an optional software built for proof-of-stake Ethereum.

MEV-Boost allows validators to outsource block production to maximize their reward. Though there are upsides to MEV and MEV-Boost, both can also be used by bad actors in a malicious way. Specifically, some within the Ethereum community are worried about censorship of MEV-Boost relay operators, or entities that connect validators to block builders; the fear is that the existence of these relay operators offers a big new target for censorship.

The concern is so widespread that it was addressed during the most recent Ethereum Core Developers meeting.

If we allow censorship of user transactions on the network, then we basically failed. This is the hill that Im willing to die on, developer Marius van der Wijden said during the call. If we start allowing users to be censored on Ethereum then this whole thing doesnt make sense, and I will be leaving the ecosystem.

Most Ethereum developers, however, sounded hopeful that potential MEV-related issues, especially involving censorship, would not be prevalent threats, and remained focused on building Ethereum as a censorship-free protocol.

While some may take the topic more seriously than others, experts in the cryptocurrency space dont believe censorship-related fears are overblown, especially if blockchains are more widely used by normies as time goes on.

If crypto is going to go mainstreamits going to have to exist within a modern regulatory framework. That means adhering to OFAC sanctions, allowing for strong protections from money laundering, and so on, Matt Hougan, Bitwise CIO, tells Fortune. The question vis--vis ETH validators, however, is whether that adherence should occur at the foundational technological layer, or on the application and user side.

Hougan made an analogy involving the internet, asking whether libel and hate speech should be banned by the internet itself, or handled at the user and application layer instead. History suggests that freedom, innovation, and growth are best served when technologies are allowed to be credibly neutral, and we police bad acts by policing bad actors, he said.

And though the merge hasnt happened yet, weve already seen forms of censorship on Ethereum in a few ways.

Ethereum infrastructure companies Infura and Alchemy have blocked access to Tornado Cash. Circle, the company behind the popular USDC stablecoin, froze Tornado Cashlinked addresses. Uniswap, the largest decentralized exchange on Ethereum, has also reportedly blocked Tornado Cashlinked addresses. Even Ethermine, the largest Ethereum miner, stopped processing Tornado Cash transactions, being dubbed the first hard evidence seen of censorship actually happening in block production online.

Looking ahead, only time will tell how, or if, censorship resistance is maintained.

Some online predict the decentralized finance (DeFi) space will continue to split into two: one being a regulated, compliant version of DeFi, and the other being badlands DeFi, as Gabriel Shapiro, general counsel at Delphi Labs, wrote on Twitter. Most blue-chip projects will embrace the former.

To Hougan, an interesting part of this process is that the Ethereum community is determining through discussion how important decentralization is as a core value. Different blockchains will decide on different answers to this question, and it will be interesting to see which answer the market rewards and punishes.

Until then, the debate surrounding censorship on Ethereum is likely to get louder.

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The Ethereum community is worried about censorship as the merge approaches. Heres why - Fortune

Elon Musk is back in the headlines this week. The founder and CEO of Tesla contributed a piece to China Cyberspace, the official publication of the Cyberspace Administration of China, which is the government's cyber censorship arm. It's a big deal, and proof of how deeply entangled Musk is with a regime hostile to free speech, and to the human rights of its people more broadly.

Worse, Musk's closeness with the Cyberspace Administration of China raises important questions about whether Musk, who has a Giga factory in China and has taken over $1 billion in loans from the country, has fallen prey to China's Military Civil Fusion disclosure laws. And the stakes are high: Is Musk supplying China with classified information he gains by working with the U.S. space program and other national security-sensitive projects?

Not only does the Cyberspace Administration of China control and often choke the flow of information into and out of the country, but it also provides data security for Tencent, a giant logistics conglomerate controlled by the Communist Party of China that owns 5 percent of Tesla.

The scale of Musk's operations in China makes him vulnerable to intimidation by its communist leadership, and should make us wary of his pending deal to buy Twitter. Do we really want Twitter's owner to be someone entangled substantially with one of the most repressive governments on earth, one with a long history of forcing private companies to serve its interests?

Twitter is banned in China, along with many other media companies that don't toe the party line. But some Chinese dissidents do manage to use the platform inside the country, as do many outside the country to coordinate resistance. While Musk initially claimed to be a free speech absolutist, on April 27, he clarified that he would comply with the government laws that restrict free speech.

Of course, Musk is far from the only tech magnate who has raised concerns. Amazon has catered even more directly to the censorship needs of the Communist Party of China, like when it partnered with a propaganda arm of the government to market a collection of President Xi Jinping's speeches and writings published on a Chinese website in 2020. When Amazon customers began to publish unflattering reviews of the collection, the Chinese government ordered the reviews removed and the comment feature disabled for not just this but all products sold in China.

Moreover, the CCP has partnered with Amazon on a project known as China Books, which offers 90,000 Chinese books for sale but generates little revenue. The project is widely seen as a sop to keep the government happy so Amazon can function. The company stated in an internal document back in 2018 that "ideological control and propaganda is the core of the toolkit for the Communist Party to achieve and maintain its success. We are not making judgment on whether it is right or wrong."

Meanwhile, Google is working on a China-only search engine that will black out websites and search terms the government considers threateninglike those pertaining to human rights, democracy and religion.

And Twitter has worked with the Chinese Communist Party to whitewash the abuse of the Uyghurs at the hands of the Chinese government. According to reports, Twitter promoted more than 50 tweets from the Global Times, a Chinese state-run media outfit, that deliberately mislead users on how the Uyghurs are treated in the detention camps in which they're forced to live.

Every day, we see stories of corporations making the choice to participate in everything from censorship to masking drastic human rights violations, in order to retain access to China's lucrative market of 1.3 billion people.

Fortunately, the days of this problem being ignored are ending. Already Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla) and Rep. Chris Stewart (R-Utah) are working to learn more and perhaps develop legislation to guide these exchanges.

Stewart wants hearings to determine exactly what confidential information may fall into China's hands as a result of Big Tech's cowardly capitulation, and Rubio is interested in reforming contracting procedures to make sure we're not going into business with Chinese Communist Party-aligned businesses.

A variety of approaches are possible. But one thing is clear: It is past time we learn more about what it means for an American corporation to do business in sensitive industries in China. We may be shocked at what we find.

Jianli Yang is founder and president ofCitizen Power Initiatives for China and the author of For Us, the Living: A Journey to Shine the Light on Truth.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.

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Big Tech Is Fully Cooperating With China's Censorship Regime. It's Got to Stop | Opinion - Newsweek

Largest US Exchange Accounts For 14% Of All Staked ETH

After several days of mounting pressure, Coinbase co-founder and CEO Brian Armstrong said that he would rather shut down the companys Ethereum staking service than comply with a government order to censor sanctioned transactions.

Its a hypothetical we hopefully wont actually face. But if we did wed go with B i think, Armstrong tweeted in response to Rotki founder Lefteris Karapetsas, who had asked Coinbase and its peers whether they would censor or leave the staking business if pressured by regulators.

Got to focus on the bigger picture. There may be some better option (C) or a legal challenge as well that could help reach a better outcome, Armstrong continued.

Coinbase accounts for about 14% of all staked Ether, with more than 1.9M ETH locked on behalf of its users in the networks Beacon chain. Ether is trading at $1,850 on Wednesday evening in New York, making Coinbases stake worth more than $3.5B.

The sanctions levied on Tornado Cash and the subsequent arrest of a developer who contributed to its code have kicked off an existential debate within the Ethereum community. And prominent members are demanding that billion-dollar players like Coinbase take sides.

You had one jobONE JOB: censorship resistance, Lane Rettig, a former Ethereum core developer, wrote on Twitter, addressing the Ethereum community. Its the ONE THING that makes all the pain worthwhile: all the obnoxious, slow, painful decentralization theater. If you cant do that one thing, then theres no point in any of this and we should all pack up and go home already.

Four entities Lido, Coinbase, Kraken and Binance control about 60% of the Ether used to secure Ethereums Beacon Chain, the proof-of-stake consensus layer running in parallel with Ethereums current proof-of-work chain. When the two merge a long-anticipated event currently scheduled for mid-September the Beacon Chain will effectively absorb the proof-of-work chain, reducing Ethereums energy use by over 99%.

But it will also give major staking entities the power to, in theory, reject certain transactions.

That once far-fetched hypothetical scenario now seems all too real, after the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned the Tornado Cash protocol and some four dozen affiliated crypto wallets on the grounds that they facilitated money laundering by state-sponsored North Korean hackers and other cybercriminals.

Earlier this week, Karapetsas posed a question to Lido, Coinbase and other major stakers. If regulators demand they censor Ethereum transactions, would they [A] comply? Or would they [B] exit the staking business to preserve network integrity, forfeiting billions of dollars in the process?

If any of them choose [to comply] we should actively strive to move away from them as they are an existential threat to the permissionless nature of the network, he wrote in a subsequent tweet.

The question has sparked a heated, multifaceted debate Would regulators really do that? Could they? What would Lido, Coinbase and other staking entities have to do in order to comply? And, perhaps most importantly: if they did comply, how could the community fight back?

Crypto attorney Geoff Costeloe said centralized staking entities would have no choice but to comply with government censorship orders.

These arent individuals. They are entities with shareholders and an obligation to profit, he tweeted. Only if A was less profitable than B (or similar) would it be a real question.

Luke Youngblood, a developer at DeFi protocol Moonwell who formerly worked on Coinbases ETH staking offering, disputed the claim.

One thing you might not know is that all of Coinbase retail Ethereum validators operate outside the US (for tax purposes). So not only will they fight censorship to their last, dying breath, it is a stretch for US regulators to censor transactions.

In the event Coinbase and company do comply, however, the Ethereum community would be left with little recourse other than a user activated soft fork, or USAF, according to observers.

Such a move would eliminate the stake of any entity that systematically engages in baselayer censorship to comply with government regulation, according to Twitter personality and self-described bitcoiner Eric Wall.

In a series of threads serving as a call to action, Wall is urging his followers to pressure large stakes to take a stand against censorship.

Blake West, the co-founder of Goldfinch, believes that Circle, the issuer of the USDC stablecoin, effectively has veto power over Ethereum, given USDCs importance in the ecosystem. To illustrate his point, he cites an attempt by some to keep Ethereums proof-of-work chain alive after The Merge.

Miners, the operators who contribute vast amounts of computing power to secure Ethereum today, will find their expensive equipment useless after the Merge and have pledged to fork the network in other words, to copy and paste Ethereum as it exists today and continue operating it as though nothing has changed.

West believes this effort will prove futile.

When the [proof-of-work] fork goes live, the supply of USDC will on-chain at least immediately double, he wrote. But of course, the dollars in Circles bank account will not. Thus Circle must choose one and only one chain. They chose Proof of Stake. And that alone kills the PoW fork. b/c the on-chain state becomes chaos if USDC value immediately drops to zero.

Blockworks research analyst Matt Fiebach believes this could doom an anti-censorship USAF.

Will Circle (USDC) support the censored chain or the not censored one? he mused on Twitter. If they choose the censored one (as is likely), well, we might be screwed my permissionless-supporting friends.

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Coinbase CEO: Would Exit Staking Biz If Forced To Censor Transactions - The Defiant - DeFi News

This week, the local-to-me Moms For Liberty contingent lost their bid to get Gender Queer removed from Barrington School District 220. Parents and community members who supported the right to read and queer students and educators in the district showed up to the meeting, and the committee reviewing the book found it to be appropriate for their high school library.

As this was happening, a new billboard showed up in Crystal Lake, Illinois, which is just a few miles west of Barrington. The billboard said that districts in the town needed to stop sexualizing children, and at their school board meeting the same night, a regular right-wing staple showed up and spoke about government conspiracies related to the 1918 pandemic (shes been mad about a book in their school library since at least January). That individual filed three FOIA requests in a span of minutes to the school district. The first, which was denied, demanded to know the sexuality of educators and students in the district. The second and third were requests that could be Googled.

Snuggled in between Crystal Lake and Barrington is Cary, which has its own breed of right-wing parents itching to get their say in education.

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Barrington, Cary, and Crystal Lake are close to Lake In The Hills, where UpRising Bakery was vandalized in July because they were hosting an all-ages drag show brunch in their private business. The event was canceled as they cleaned up the damage from the individual who drove over an hour to destroy the space the night before the show, and what followed was a lawsuit from the ACLU against the town because of how it decided to proceed. The queer-owned bakery was able to host the show to a sold-out crowd just days later.

UpRising also sent educators in Barrington a welcome back feast to kick off the school year and support them as they endure continued attacks by groups who have agendas and no background in education.

Never fear, though. The local Moms For Liberty group tweeted their support of educators as parnets (yes, misspelled that way), then showed up to the board meeting to talk about indoctrination.

Im sure Im not saying anything that will shock readers here, but if its not clear already, perhaps this makes it clear: while this is about the books, it is in no way about the books. Its about the systemic erasure of queer people. If the books arent available and the teachers are called any number of names, then queer people disappear, right? And if a private business is vandalized by someone who was at the January 6 insurrection its not about education or indoctrination, is it?

I was unable to make the board meeting in Barrington to support queer members of the district. Despite that, and despite not being a citizen of the community but one of a town nearby, I wrote a letter. Im sharing it here in hopes that this can help others looking for ways to act and how to approach letter writing. You are welcome to copy and modify as appropriate.

Ive shared a template before. This is that template expanded. In addition to offering support for the book and for queer community members, I took the time to lay out who the people behind these pushes to curtail intellectual freedom are and the where and how of these coordinated movements.

In addition to sending the letter to the board, I also emailed every teacher librarian in the district and thanked them for their hard work. One board member thanked me for that, as they knew how much ugly rhetoric and discussion around these hard-working members of the school community were fielding.

So much for the Joyful Warrior parnets supporting educators.

I wanted to share the above story because much of this is news to me this week. I live here, I spend a lot of time researching book bans and access to information, and yet, I did not know what was happening in Crystal Lake. It was a reminder how wide-spread this right-wing nationalism is and, more, how local media fails to keep their eye on these things its being put on citizens to share this information and to band together, show up, and make sure that student rights are at the forefront of education.

This is not the beginning nor the end of challenges in Barrington. The district retained Lawn Boy earlier this year, and several other books are on the docket for review. Those include Flamer, This Book is Gay, Fighting Words, and All Boys Arent Blue.

It is equally disturbing that, aside from Chicago Media Collective, not a single Chicagoland media outlet had reported on this story until Thursday (the meeting was on Tuesday). They gave space to those who created the queer panic earlier this summer, but it has been radio silence still. This means parents who want to show up in support of education as a means to expanding world views remain completely in the dark about whats happening.

The lack of local media, as well as the focus of legacy media on only the clickiest stories, is in no small part why we are where we are and why well continue to be plowed by these well-organized, well-funded hate groups.

The Get Ready Stay Ready toolkit, built by parents and librarians, is one way to be prepared as an average citizen. This on-going effort is an incredible resource for staying up to date on issues relating to censorship and how you can prepare and fight back against these agendas. There are letters and templates you can use to contact school and library boards, training and educational resources to up your knowledge, and and resources aplenty for civic engagement, for supporting queer people, and for seeing and boosting voices of marginalized people. Save this and refer to it often as you continue your work ensuring access to information and ongoing support for queer and BIPOC students, educators, and library workers across the country.

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Defending the Right to Read: Book Censorship News, August 19, 2022 - Book Riot

Former kickboxer turned social media sensation Andrew Tate has now officially been banned from Meta platforms. Tate widely gained fame for his controversial views on women and society in general and became one of the most polarizing figures on the internet recently.

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Moreover, his ban has sent the internet into a frenzy as people were divided on this decision. Top Gs polarizing personality can be perfectly displayed after his ban as people flocked to two sides. Some came out to support Tate claiming that this was an attack on freedom of speech and expression while others stated that his controversial views should not be spread across the internet.

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Renowned Youtuber Coffeezilla, who even made a video exposing Tates Hustlers university, stated that Tate should not be banned. He claimed that although he did not agree with Top G, banning him was not the answer.

Another controversial Youtuber Sneako defended Tate calling out Meta for promoting an agenda.

Moreover, former MMA champion Jake Shields also defended Top G. He stated that people who call out Tate for manipulating young boys had no problem with models like Kim Kardashian influencing young girls.

Political commentator Mike Cernovich stated that former Illumisoft CEO Dan Price was accused of far worse things than Tate. However, there was no call for him to get banned.

Furthermore, Youtuber Daz Black took shots at the left wing claiming that they can get anyone banned.

Social media insider KeemStar called out people for harassing him because he thought Tate should not be banned.

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Moreover, Instagram personality George Resch stated that Tate got banned because he said things everyone was too afraid to say.

This was not all as internet personality LizardKing stated that censorship was not the answer to the problem.

Twitch streamer InfernoOmni was shocked by this ban and asked his audience whether the ban was justified.

However, some people thought that this ban was justified as feminist page Whor*sofYore tried to troll Top G.

Another influencer Mattxiv, whose initial post calling out Tate went viral on Instagram, stated that freedom of speech does not apply on social media platforms. He claimed that Tate had a right to free speech, but his being on the platforms was entirely up to them.

However, Youtube sensation Jake Paul also came out to address both sides of the issue. He stated that he didnt agree with Tates opinions and also did not agree with censorship.

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While many people may not agree with Tates opinion, censoring him will only add to the problem. We have seen many cases where banning a controversial figure only adds to their popularity. Moreover, the argument that social media platforms have a right to ban people should be debated heavily. In todays world, the integration of these platforms in our lives has made it impossible to voice our opinions without them, and as history tells us the key to a good society is healthy discourse and debate, not censoring individuals that some people dont agree with.

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Do you think Tate should be banned? Let us know in the comments.

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Censorship Is never the Answer: Influencers Flock to Twitter Over Wild Ban on Andrew Tate - EssentiallySports