The United States government banned certain cryptocurrency mixers, including Tornado Cash, in August. The United States Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has blacklisted this crypto mixer for money laundering. A recent report by an Ethereum researcher indicates that the Flashbots service is trying to comply with new US regulatory requirements. Indeed, Flashbots censor Tornado Cash transactions. Find out what this means for Ethereum (ETH).
A few Ethereum blocks are compliant!
An Ethereum researcher called Toni Wahrstätter has declared discovering that the operator Flashbots censors transactions related to Tornado Cash. This is the conclusion of research he has done recently analyzing the Ethereum blockchain. It appears thatno block among the set of 19,436 blocks generated on the network after the Merge does not contain data related to a Tornado Cash transaction.
It should be noted that to generate its blocks, Ethereum uses, among other things, the relay software (MEV-Boost) from Flashbots. And it is this software that would have been configured to automatically censor transactions related to Tornado Cash. It should be noted that Flashbots alone represents 23% of the blocks on the Ethereum (ETH) network. This allows us to say that at least 23% of blocks on the Ethereum (ETH) network comply with US sanctions.
“It’s worrying how quickly the potential for censorship has grown out of control since the Merger, and its potential to get worse as more validators opt for MEV-Boost, unless awareness does be increased“, explained the company Labrys. Labrys happens to be a web3 development company.
According to data published by researcher Toni Wahrstätter, Flashbots is the only MEV relay that complies with US sanctions. Transactions with Tornado Cash remain authorized with operators like Blocknative, Eden Network and Bloxroute. However, these three operators had affirmed that they respected the sanctions imposed by the American Treasury.
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