Ethereum close to 100% censorship due to OFAC compliance

The community has been monitoring Ethereum‘s increasing compliance with requirements set forth by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). This is due to the fact that protocol-level censorship is a deterrent to the crypto ecosystem’s goal of extremely open and accessible finance.

The Ethereum network was discovered to enforce OFAC compliance on more than 74% of its blocks over the last 24 hours.

       Ethereum sporting 74% OFAC-compliant blocks. Source: mevwatch.info

After 51% of ETH blocks were discovered to be in compliance with OFAC rules, there were initially growing censorship worries. The daily minting of OFAC-compliant blocks has increased to 73% as of Nov 3, according to data from mevWatch.

Certain MEV-Boost relays, which are subject to OFAC regulation, will censor particular transactions. As a result, in order to guarantee Ethereum’s impartiality, the network must implement an MEV-Boost relay that does not censor traffic.

By removing relays like BloXroute Max Profit, BloxRoute Ethical, Manifold, and Relayooor from their MEV-Boost configuration, Ethereum validators can lessen their compliance with OFAC regulations.

The US government agency can apply economic and trade sanctions thanks to compliance with OFAC. The organization previously sanctioned Tornado Cash and a number of ETH addresses. 45% of all Ethereum blocks as of today are regarded as OFAC-compliant.

Bitcoin and Ethereum adoption on the rise

The increasing adoption of BTC and ETH  accelerated after UnionBank, one of the Philippines’ biggest universal banks, launched cryptocurrency trading in collaboration with the Swiss crypto company Metaco.

Henry Aguda, chief technology officer and chief transformation officer of UnionBank, said, they are thrilled to continue UnionBank’s run of industry firsts, this time becoming the first regulated bank in the country allowing digital currency exchange services for clients.

As “the foundational orchestration platform” and “a fully managed service deployed in the cloud,” UnionBank uses the digital asset custody platform Harmonize, according to the company, managing governance, and operations for the pilot as the bank gets ready for “wider rollouts” of its digital asset services.