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> This was not an issue with the old proof of work scheme.

Censorship of transactions because of OFAC is already happening in PoW mining.

https://twitter.com/takenstheorem/status/1560690035955011585...

discuss

Except in in PoW it only means delayed transactions, because only one miner has to "sign off" the block - everyone else accept it passively. A single miner, even with 0.1% mining power is enough to keep the network censorship resistant.

In PoS majority of validators has to actively approve a block containing "illegal" transactions, leading to permanent censorship.

The exact interpretation of validation vs mining responsibility in face of law and passive vs active is fuzzy , but it leaves miners is better legal position.

randomran01234|3 years ago

Interesting, so this is a problem if 66% or more decide to reject a transaction. How many blocks are currently signed by solo miners in PoW? Almost all blocks are signed by pools which looks like the PoS committees in practice yo my naive eyes. A miner with 0.1% hash power would probably be a very long delay.

I do agree this is probably the most concerning thing that Tornado Cash sanctions have shown us. Still don’t think the energy cost of PoW is worth it, and would rather see PBS and crList solve this problem.

https://notes.ethereum.org/@fradamt/H1ZqdtrBF

brian_cloutier|3 years ago

PoS seems very similar to PoW, and if one is fine (as we seem to think), the other is fine too.

In POW there are only block producers, and producing a block requires actively choosing transactions and transaction ordering.

Ethereum POS includes an additional attestation step where validators confirm that they have seen blocks without exercising any control over the contents of those blocks.

But this is exactly what PoW miners do when they extend the chain: every block is a vote for all previous blocks in the chain.

robcohen|3 years ago

A better legal position, until that is it's made illegal to accept unapproved blocks. PoW is not immune to the exact same regulatory pressure. The US gov can just force a fork of the chain by requiring US miners to only accept approved blocks.

0x64|3 years ago

You are wrong about the majority of validators having to approve a certain transaction for them to be included. Even if 80 % of the network were censoring, those transactions would, on average, make it into every fifth block.

camjohnson26|3 years ago

That appears to be a single miner, so the transactions will still go through.

paulpauper|3 years ago

so what if more do it? then you got a problem. just 3 miners control >50%