OFAC-Sanctioned Transactions Being Censored

[titular]

*Also, fuck F2Pool. I could at least understand why a wallet would do it, but for a bitcoin miner to violate the decentralization of the network they directly profit from is a mortal sin.

This is what I struggled with the most..the fact that one of the largest pools is openly violating one of the core principles of the network is just shocking.

I really want to understand their motivation for censoring the transactions in the first place. Would they even face any legal issues if they simply included the transaction? How does F2Pool benefit from the censorship? Political ass-kissing?

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[titular]

Also, how are they able to censor it? What is the technology that they are implying here that is calling them to do so? Until now I thought we were on a public ledger meaning anything that is sent or received can be seen on the chain if we know the BTC address. From where is the topic of censorship stated or was it included in the white paper already?  I would say I am still #weakintechnicals

If you give the article a read, you will see they explain it in pretty decent detail.

Bitcoin miners have a significant influence on which transactions get included in a block when they successfully mine one. While Bitcoin is designed to be a decentralized and censorship-resistant system, miners, especially those in mining pools, have some degree of discretion in selecting transactions for inclusion.

Miners choose which transactions to include in a block based on various factors. These factors commonly include the transaction fee attached to the transaction, the size of the transaction in terms of block space, the priority of the transaction, and network latency.

Based off what the writer says, these factors aren't always intentional or malicious. But in certain cases, there has been evidence showing that certain pools (F2Pool) may be censoring intentionally.

[Poker Player]

What I'm grabbing my popcorn for is the moment they stop with the backlisting and start with the reverse thing, whitelisted addresses only in their blocks, so unless you do KYC with every single one of them wit all your addresses you might have to think of solo mining  . And it's going to happen, I'm 99% sure they are already thinking of it but are just testing the waters for a while with smaller measure for a while, then, some will have a shock realizing how little decentralization we have in this aspect.

I see that this comment has been overlooked because no one has said anything about it. In my case I hope you are wrong, what I am afraid of is that it sounds quite plausible to me. I have long said that governments when they realized they couldn't stop Bitcoin focused on trying to control it and this would be an ultimate form of control. It goes along the lines of the legislations in progress to treat Bitcoin transactions as if they were banking transactions, so yes, unfortunately I see your vision possible, although I hope it doesn't end up being realized.

[HmmMAA]

Well , seems that people will start to understand that "not your keys , not your coins" is just a myth . I think we are near to the point where "honest nodes" will start rejecting blocks mined by "dishonest nodes" . There is a war incoming , and maxis haven't realise that yet . Their myths are falling one after the other apart .

[Z-tight]

Well , seems that people will start to understand that "not your keys , not your coins" is just a myth

Not your keys, not your coins isn't a myth, if you don't control the keys to your funds, then they are probably not yours, and the service that controls it can do what they want with your funds. This case is more about censorship and BTC's nature as being censorship resistant, and for this to escalate into major problem, then most mining pools will have to encourage censorship, put their resources together, and if they have 51% of the hashrate, then they can 'control' the network.

I think we are near to the point where "honest nodes" will start rejecting blocks mined by "dishonest nodes" . There is a war incoming , and maxis haven't realise that yet . Their myths are falling one after the other apart .

Nodes reject blocks and tx's that do not follow the rules of the network and as such are invalid, that is what they have been doing since the inception of the network. There is no rule that forbids miners from 'selecting' the tx's they can add into a block, but it goes against the principles and ethics of the network as being censorship resistant.

[alani123]

It's funny, P2POOL's admin seems to be very eccentric.


He was essentially forced to disable the OFAC compliancy filtering after his shenanigans went viral and miners would likely start fleeing the pool. This tweet is now deleted.



He went on to post that Bitcoin should be censorship resistant on the protocol level instead on relying on incentives by miners. 
Ummm, excuse me, what the fuck? Are we supposed to believe he genuinely believes this for Bitcoin? So he would not censor BTC transactions only if his hand was forced to? Ok... Still good enough reason to abandon this pool.

[DooMAD]

He went on to post that Bitcoin should be censorship resistant on the protocol level instead on relying on incentives by miners.  
Ummm, excuse me, what the fuck? Are we supposed to believe he genuinely believes this for Bitcoin? So he would not censor BTC transactions only if his hand was forced to? Ok... Still good enough reason to abandon this pool.

Likely just an attempt to save face.  He clearly realises he fucked up.

All due concerns aside, though, I'm proud of the community for their vigilance.  Full praise for how they picked up on this right away and acted so swiftly and decisively in their condemnation of this act.

[Lucius]

Although this is bad news, MARA AND F2Pool currently have about a 15% share of all mined blocks.

But there is also Foundry with 27% and that one is a closed pool with only big guys in the US mining, mainly companies listed on the stock exchange, and those will need just a hint or an email from the ones overseeing these and they will start censoring too, the percentage of those transactions is so small it won't even make a tiny dent in their revenue.
What I'm grabbing my popcorn for is the moment they stop with the backlisting and start with the reverse thing, whitelisted addresses only in their blocks, so unless you do KYC with every single one of them wit all your addresses you might have to think of solo mining  . And it's going to happen, I'm 99% sure they are already thinking of it but are just testing the waters for a while with smaller measure for a while, then, some will have a shock realizing how little decentralization we have in this aspect.

Those who want to centralize Bitcoin will always look for a way to do it in some way, and it is obvious that large mining pools will be their main target through which they will be able to control transactions to some extent. What is definitely worrying is that more than 50% of all these mining pools are located in the US and China, and both countries actually have the same goal, only with the difference that the Chinese authorities do it without asking anyone for their opinion, while the authorities in the US still have to be much more careful if they don't want someone to accuse them of using communist methods.

We definitely need more decentralization when it comes to mining, but unfortunately it's just a good deal for most (right now), and if a better opportunity came along, they'd all dump Bitcoin overnight. Most miners do it only for profit, not because they support Bitcoin as a decentralized currency.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Hard forking by completely ignoring perfectly valid blocks just because they include transactions by BTC addresses in the OFAC list would likely create a very big debate.

I don't want a debate. I don't want it to be up for argument, and whichever side shouts loudest wins. I want a permissionless, uncensorable, network.

so yes, unfortunately I see your vision possible, although I hope it doesn't end up being realized.

Hoping is insufficient. Governments around the world will continue to push ahead with more and more invasive control if we don't stop them. I've said for a long time we need more on-chain privacy as a default, but no one cares about privacy anymore. They only care about making more fiat profit. And so bitcoin is headed for government control, and the masses will be happy because they made a few bucks along the way.

[Don Pedro Dinero]

Hoping is insufficient. Governments around the world will continue to push ahead with more and more invasive control if we don't stop them. I've said for a long time we need more on-chain privacy as a default, but no one cares about privacy anymore. They only care about making more fiat profit. And so bitcoin is headed for government control, and the masses will be happy because they made a few bucks along the way.

The problem is that although we may be more privacy conscious in this forum, people who are starting to invest in bitcoin are mostly doing so because of the possibility of a big profit in fiat. Then maybe when they invest some people start to inform themselves and may change, which implies a long way: if they have bought bitcoin in a CEX they should return it to the CEX (assuming it is in their custody), sell it, pay the corresponding taxes and from there if they get bitcoin with DEX or in other ways with privacy they hope that a long time passes without anyone thinking of investigating them because they once bought and sold it in a CEX.

It is easier to fuck up privacy than the other way around.

[alani123]

Hard forking by completely ignoring perfectly valid blocks just because they include transactions by BTC addresses in the OFAC list would likely create a very big debate.

I don't want a debate. I don't want it to be up for argument, and whichever side shouts loudest wins. I want a permissionless, uncensorable, network.

That sounds ideal but by how bitcoin is currently structured, miners hold a lot of power over users that seek to make transactions.
So the debate would be around what avenues users have against miners that are actually enforcing censorship.

An outside party could argue that since miners know what transactions they are confirming, they are in a way contributing to "financial crime".
A tweet I shared above shows Adam Back has proposed a potential solution to this, but I haven't seen its potential drawbacks discussed anywhere to know if it's any good. Maybe now is the time to accelerate developing something like this.

[Zaguru12]

Hoping is insufficient. Governments around the world will continue to push ahead with more and more invasive control if we don't stop them. I've said for a long time we need more on-chain privacy as a default, but no one cares about privacy anymore. They only care about making more fiat profit. And so bitcoin is headed for government control, and the masses will be happy because they made a few bucks along the way.

I can’t agree less with you that the volatility of bitcoin which makes it profitable when you invest in it has actually made people to forget about the main aim which is privacy. We can see how people easily trade on centralized exchanges just to make the money without caring too much about the privacy. This has even made some people feel that with government control or KYC exchanges the bitcoin network is safer than how decentralized or privacy oriented it is now, and I tell you this exactly where the government want us to be.

Take for example the hype around the bitcoin ETF, at first I thought it should be a thing of concern because AFAIK those institutions opting for ETF are worse than CEXs in terms of privacy (as I believe the government will easily have more control over them than the latter) but most people are happy it is happen because according to them it will drive in more people and make bitcoin price skyrocket.

[el kaka22]

I mean everyone can make mistakes, I believe that everyone deserves a second chance, this isn't really as big of a deal as people think. I get that if it was something huge then we would have something that would be quite difficult to handle, but when we are in a situation like this, it is not going to be all that crazy to be fair and we should see it change one way or another.

I believe that the best thing to do right now would be making sure that you could end up with a profit if you know what you are doing with mining, and this company does know what they are doing and they are a strong one and preferred one by many miners, so there shouldn't be really an issue with it and we should keep it going as strong as ever.

[DaveF]

Going to be an unpopular opinion but.

1) Pools are a BUSINESS.
2) Businesses are run by people with different views some of which you may agree with some of which you may not.
3) Businesses are profit driven and for the most part risk adverse. So they will give up some profit at times to mitigate risk.

Is mining a transaction on the OFAC sanctioned list worth it.

Well now you have to factor in a few things.
1) Do the operators agree with it? If yes then they will not mine it. It's their pool. If they don't want to mine TXs from certain people / addresses they are free not to. You are free to point your miners someplace else.

2) Even if they don't agree with it, is the risk worth it? This now gets trickier. Fees are high and the mempool is full. At worst they are giving up fractions of pennies to mine different transactions. If it's years in the future and we have gone through several more 1/2ings and most the the reward comes from fees and the mempool is empty, and they are paying a large fee you can have a different view. For now, no sane business would risk it

Does this go against the spirit of BTC? Perhaps, but with no pools because they are all under threat from various governments there would be no BTC as we know it. So they walk the line.

Also, and this is a big also. Don't forget this also helps smaller pools and greater distribution of mining since smaller pools will probably not enforce the ban, and this perhaps could get more people mining at them.

-Dave

[stompix]

Well , seems that people will start to understand that "not your keys , not your coins" is just a myth . I think we are near to the point where "honest nodes" will start rejecting blocks mined by "dishonest nodes" .

Miners and nodes can do whatever they want, nothing changes the ownership over your coins.
Somebody denying you a service is not out of the ordinary, Foundry could simply mine empty blocks, Binance could not let you open an account, the other people might choose not to sell your  single coin cause they don't like your eye color or your nickname, don't compare the protocol with personal business decision.

They're already losing out on fee revenue by excluding otherwise perfectly valid transactions from their blocks just because of OFAC.

ViaBTC loses one hundred times more money from running their accelerator, fees form some sanctioned address are not even rounding error  numbers.

I see that this comment has been overlooked because no one has said anything about it. In my case I hope you are wrong, what I am afraid of is that it sounds quite plausible to me. I have long said that governments when they realized they couldn't stop Bitcoin focused on trying to control it and this would be an ultimate form of control. It goes along the lines of the legislations in progress to treat Bitcoin transactions as if they were banking transactions, so yes, unfortunately I see your vision possible, although I hope it doesn't end up being realized.

I hope too I'm wrong but seeing how Korea forced their exchanges to make withdrawal only to other KYC addresses and this has been going for a while, what stops other countries doing so, and from exchanges to miners and pools it's just a step and a new signature on a law. Yeah, one can hope but the problem is that I don't see a way out of it if enforced.

We definitely need more decentralization when it comes to mining, but unfortunately it's just a good deal for most (right now), and if a better opportunity came along, they'd all dump Bitcoin overnight. Most miners do it only for profit, not because they support Bitcoin as a decentralized currency.

Well, running miners cost money, so , why should they do it for free?
Quite ironic, one one side we have small blocks cause it would be costly otherwise to run some 20 000 computers with 16GB of ram and a 8TB ssd, on the other hand we want decentralization and, let's see who will host 2 million 5Kw $10K machines.
Decentralization comes with a ....PRICE! 

[HmmMAA]

Miners and nodes can do whatever they want, nothing changes the ownership over your coins.
Somebody denying you a service is not out of the ordinary, Foundry could simply mine empty blocks, Binance could not let you open an account, the other people might choose not to sell your  single coin cause they don't like your eye color or your nickname, don't compare the protocol with personal business decision.

Well , i don't know if in a property that you don't have the right to use , move or sell you can be considered it's owner .

[cryptosize]

Well , seems that people will start to understand that "not your keys , not your coins" is just a myth . I think we are near to the point where "honest nodes" will start rejecting blocks mined by "dishonest nodes" . There is a war incoming , and maxis haven't realise that yet . Their myths are falling one after the other apart .

Your FUD is amazing...

Are you trying to justify BSV's confiscation mechanism?

@Everyone

HmmMAA is a BSV/CSW fanatic who loves spouting anti-BTC FUD.

[nelson4lov]

Well, running miners cost money, so , why should they do it for free?
Quite ironic, one one side we have small blocks cause it would be costly otherwise to run some 20 000 computers with 16GB of ram and a 8TB ssd, on the other hand we want decentralization and, let's see who will host 2 million 5Kw $10K machines.
Decentralization comes with a ....PRICE! 

I had a similar concern a few months back when I asked if fees will be enough to keep miners on the network when the main incentive (block rewards) are taken off the equation. It will be interesting to see how things play out when we get to that. Probably they'd have to increase fees in order to compensate for the lack of block rewards.

We'll find out when the time comes but from what I know, no one will burn those expenses to keep the network up and running out of the goodness of their hearts.

[hatshepsut93]

Until the miners start hard forking the chain to censor transactions, their refusal to include certain transactions only delays them for time on average proportional to their share of network hashpower. And when or if there will be such attempt, I'm sure the whole community will choose the censorship-free chain, just like it previously rejected SegWit2x fork attempt.

[stompix]

~

I had a similar concern a few months back when I asked if fees will be enough to keep miners on the network when the main incentive (block rewards) are taken off the equation. It will be interesting to see how things play out when we get to that.

Covered that also:
Angry at the high fees? That's what everyone predicted the future will be like!

Last block with min 44sat fee had ‎0.558 BTC fee, the default reward is 6.25  so...500sat/b to be on the same level.

Probably they'd have to increase fees in order to compensate for the lack of block rewards.

They can't increase the fee on their own, users will choose, they will either pay or not, the free market will decide what the fees are 100 years from now just as it decides now, last year there were 1 sat/b because there was no demand for space now it's 50sat/b because there is, tomorrow it might drop further or go back up, the users decide that.
Miners enforcing minimum transactions in their mined blocks will end up with nothing as this will just kill transactions on the chain completely.

Until the miners start hard forking the chain to censor transactions, their refusal to include certain transactions only delays them for time on average proportional to their share of network hashpower. And when or if there will be such attempt, I'm sure the whole community will choose the censorship-free chain....

One tiny detail, the hashrate is still there, users can choose this chain, but if those guys have more than enough hashrate (they do right now) they could simply make this chain inoperable, without "attacking" it, forking it or anything that would send them to court, all it takes it's for them to mine on this chain and at the difficulty adjustment reset to stop, if they have 66% of the hashpower for the next half and a half months you're going to see one back every 30 minutes. Imagine that happening now...