F2Pool, the third-largest Bitcoin mining pool, has recently come under scrutiny for allegedly censoring transactions from an address on the U.S. government's sanctions list. This accusation has sparked significant controversy within the Bitcoin community, challenging the fundamental principle of censorship resistance associated with the blockchain.
The issue came to light when the Bitcoin-focused blogger 0xB10C reported six missing transactions from OFAC-sanctioned addresses, detected through his miningpool-observer project. The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) plays a critical role in enforcing U.S. economic sanctions. The investigation indicated that these transactions were likely filtered out by F2Pool.
F2Pool is a major player in the Bitcoin ecosystem, responsible for about 14% of mined Bitcoin blocks over the past year. The pool's co-founder, Chun Wang, responded to the allegations with a controversial statement, implying a right to refuse transactions from certain individuals, including dictators and terrorists. This statement was later removed, and Chun mentioned that a censorship-resistant system must be built into the protocol level, rather than relying on each participant's actions.
In response to the backlash, Chun announced the temporary disabling of the transaction filtering patch until the community reaches a broader consensus on the issue. However, the Bitcoin community's reaction was overwhelmingly negative, with many emphasizing the long-standing consensus against such censorship in the blockchain space.
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