Did the crypto community see this coming?
It always seemed pretty obvious that the government would succeed in doing this. It seemed inevitable.
It always seemed pretty obvious that the government would succeed in doing this. It seemed inevitable.
Fungibility is an essential part of what makes a money good money.
For example US dollars can't be invalidated just because trace cocaine can be found of them or they don't look as good as a new US dollar, or they took part in money laundering some time ago and the last owner didn't know.
Three things are true here
1) If you dig into the details, the actual censorship is so weak in practice that calling it "censored ethereum blocks" is mostly false.
2) There are great reasons to think that the weak form of censorship this does in fact comprise is an inherently temporary problem with ethereum. And pretty much no good reasons to think it'll end up being a long-term state of affairs.
3) Nobody informed was surprised by this. It became an outcome whose high likelihood became generally known within industry shortly after the tornado contracts were added to the OFAC sanctions list.
source: I'm a low-grade ethereum insider.
If you would like to know (much) more, this recent podcast episode with a top ethereum researcher explains the past, present, and future of this issue in great detail
- video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azjpYTB7PVE
- podcast: http://podcast.banklesshq.com/134-ethereum-unsensored-with-j...
Didn't people foresee that governments would control crypto when it interfaces with the real world? They can pressure the banks, the exchanges, and any crypto infrastructure within their borders.
The government can't stop crypto completely, but they can make it really painful to use and thus reduce its value.
Assume that I'm asking in good faith, but with imperfect knowledge.
They are still fighting for the same thing for the last 30 years, just now with peer-to-peer money.
Sancioning people based on the country they were born is the antithesis of what many of us are still fighting for.
Except nothing that happen actually proves their point. PoW had "luxury" of being concentrated outside of US and yet, miners censored.
Also, whole story is barely news. Tornado Cash txs don't get included in some blocks. Which means that they have to wait 30 seconds instead of 15 seconds. Yeah, the sky is falling.
Please note that both mev-boost authors and core-devs are aligned w.r.t censorship resistance being the most important feature of Ethereum. They all work to assure that even such non-events like this are really hard to cause.