Major Bitcoin mining pool F2pool suspends response to US government sanctions

Bitcoin censorship concerns

F2pool, a leading Chinese cryptocurrency mining (PoW) pool, has announced that it will stop filtering OFAC (U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control) transactions until the community reaches a more comprehensive agreement.

OFAC transaction filtering refers to measures such as transaction bans and asset freezes taken by the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) against sanctioned individuals and countries. This filtering is considered a form of censorship by the crypto community.

This comes after an on-chain analyst named 0xB10C revealed that F2Pool has become the first Bitcoin mining pool to filter transactions (blacklisted addresses) based on OFAC sanctions. Between September and October 2023, there were six Bitcoin blocks (bundles of transactions) that were missing OFAC sanctioned transactions, and four were from F2Pool, meaning that they were missing from F2Pool’s blocks. It seemed likely that the transactions in the list were filtered. Meanwhile, the filtered transactions were approved by other miners.

F2pool founder Chun acknowledged the filtering and said that censorship-resistant systems need to be designed from the start, but later deleted this comment.

Screenshots of now deleted OP and follow up tweet pic.twitter.com/nLeb1iV1uc

— Orange Surf (@OrangeSurfBTC) November 22, 2023

Previously, the US Bitcoin mining company Marathon Digital Holdings had censored transactions subject to OFAC sanctions and eliminated some remittances (transactions) by 2021. There is a case in which the mining pool “OFAC Pool”, which was operating in compliance with US regulations, was discontinued due to the fact that it was not functioning properly.

connection: US listed company Marathon cancels transaction censorship at regulatory compliant mining pool

Ethereum too

In addition to Bitcoin, there were similar cases of censorship on the Ethereum blockchain.

In August 2022, OFAC placed the smart contract of Tornado Cash (a mixing service that anonymizes transactions) on the Sanctions List, prohibiting US persons from using or doing business with Tornado Cash, and in October of the same year. It was found that 51% of blocks generated on the 14th were constructed in a manner that complied with OFAC sanctions.

connection: Conflict between integrity and censorship resistance faced by Ethereum, overemphasis on relayers

CoinPost official app (1.7.15) has been released on iOS and Android
・iOS17 compatible
・Improved display of in-app WebView
・Improved behavior when tapping notifications
Such… pic.twitter.com/Y8dikLRBe7

— CoinPost (virtual currency media) (@coin_post) November 15, 2023

The post Major Bitcoin mining pool F2pool suspends response to US government sanctions appeared first on Our Bitcoin News.