TY - GEN
T1 - Blockchain Censorship
AU - Wahrstätter, Anton
AU - Ernstberger, Jens
AU - Yaish, Aviv
AU - Zhou, Liyi
AU - Qin, Kaihua
AU - Tsuchiya, Taro
AU - Steinhorst, Sebastian
AU - Svetinovic, Davor
AU - Christin, Nicolas
AU - Barczentewicz, Mikolaj
AU - Gervais, Arthur
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 Owner/Author.
PY - 2024/5/13
Y1 - 2024/5/13
N2 - Permissionless blockchains promise resilience against censorship by a single entity. This suggests that deterministic rules, not third-party actors, decide whether a transaction is appended to the blockchain. In 2022, the U.S. ØFAC sanctioned a Bitcoin mixer and an Ethereum application, challenging the neutrality of permissionless blockchains. In this paper, we formalize, quantify, and analyze the security impact of blockchain censorship. We start by defining censorship, followed by a quantitative assessment of current censorship practices. We find that 46% of Ethereum blocks were made by censoring actors complying with OFAC sanctions, indicating the significant impact of OFAC sanctions on the neutrality of public blockchains. We discover that censorship affects not only neutrality but also security. After Ethereum's transition to ¶oS, censored transactions faced an average delay of 85%, compromising their security and strengthening sandwich adversaries.
AB - Permissionless blockchains promise resilience against censorship by a single entity. This suggests that deterministic rules, not third-party actors, decide whether a transaction is appended to the blockchain. In 2022, the U.S. ØFAC sanctioned a Bitcoin mixer and an Ethereum application, challenging the neutrality of permissionless blockchains. In this paper, we formalize, quantify, and analyze the security impact of blockchain censorship. We start by defining censorship, followed by a quantitative assessment of current censorship practices. We find that 46% of Ethereum blocks were made by censoring actors complying with OFAC sanctions, indicating the significant impact of OFAC sanctions on the neutrality of public blockchains. We discover that censorship affects not only neutrality but also security. After Ethereum's transition to ¶oS, censored transactions faced an average delay of 85%, compromising their security and strengthening sandwich adversaries.
KW - bitcoin
KW - blockchain
KW - censorship
KW - ethereum
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85190864269&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1145/3589334.3645431
DO - 10.1145/3589334.3645431
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85190864269
T3 - WWW 2024 - Proceedings of the ACM Web Conference
SP - 1632
EP - 1643
BT - WWW 2024 - Proceedings of the ACM Web Conference
T2 - 33rd ACM Web Conference, WWW 2024
Y2 - 13 May 2024 through 17 May 2024
ER -