• Charles Hoskinson says Ethereum’s current state is comparable to a horror movie.
• The comments in response to growing censorship concerns regarding Ethereum.
• More than 70% of Ethereum blocks are OFAC compliant, hence censored.

Charles Hoskinson, the founder of Cardano, recently labeled Ethereum as the Hotel California of crypto and “The Shining” horror film. Hoskinson made the above comparison to reflect that if the blocks are Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) compliant, then the US government gets to know who uses Ethereum.

Furthermore, the Ethereum co-founder tweeted:

Hoskinson made these comments as a response to a visual depicting censored blocks on the Ethereum chain post-Merge. The image posted by a Twitter user reveals that most blocks comply with the OFAC, the US sanctions unit.

Since protocol-level censorship works against the crypto ecosystem’s vision of decentralized, freely accessible finance, the community has been monitoring Ethereum’s progress toward fulfilling the requirements put out by OFAC.

Earlier this month, it was reported that the network had to censor over 70% of its blocks in order to be OFAC compliant.

Complying with OFAC regulations permits the US government agency to carry out its mandated economic and trade sanctions. The agency previously sanctioned Tornado Cash and numerous Ethereum addresses.

The use of mev-boost, a tool that enables validators to outsource block generation in order to raise APR, has stoked concerns about censorship on Ethereum. The shift from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake on Ethereum has led to a notable rise in both use and the number of block proposers (The Merge).

It gives validators the freedom to select the relays they wish to utilize and hence, the block-producing service they want. But just three of the seven accessible relays are not OFAC compliant, as reported by mevwatch.info.

The growing trend suggests that OFAC-compliant relays are more profitable, even if the community encourages validators to choose non-OFAC relays to maintain the chain impartial. As a result, it provides incentives for validators to engage in chain censorship.

In response to these issues, the Ethereum development team has included The Scourge phase in the project’s roadmap. Vitalik Buterin has emphasized that this next phase would address mev-boost concerns and boost decentralization on the chain.