As of August 13th, Ethereum Network had recorded its censorship level at zero, according to data from the censorship site. This means that most of the transactions are processed by the validator Without discrimination of its origin or destinystrengthens network resistance.
As can be seen in the following graph, Most network participants do not apply censorship. Validators show 99.5% of “non-senselters”, relaxation reaches 100% and builders reach 96.82%.
In this context, the validator is a network participant who blocks a certain amount of ethher (ETH) as a guarantee, then validates the transaction and proposes a new block.
loss relayMeanwhile, they send those blocks to the validator, builder They assemble the transactions.
Censorship sites classify entities as censored with samples of over 100 blocks over 30 days. There are significantly fewer blocks containing authorized transactions.
To do this, compare half the network average for the same period with uncensored block rates. The analysis is performed by blocks to review each transaction and its traces to identify possible sanctionable violations.
The final level at Ethereum was observed by the validation factor with similar censorship levels to the current ones. November 2022, And on that occasion, the situation lasted for just a few days.
From the previous graph, we also get a glimpse of the increase in censorship of verification factors in January 2024, early April 2025. He began playing up to 14% of the business in March 2025.
But suddenly, at the beginning of April, these levels were driven by the case of cash tornado platforms.
Meanwhile, between December 2023 and the end of March 2025, relay They showed censorship rates of 40% to 60%. Since then they have accepted all the operations.
in the case of builderbetween 2023 and 2024 They now censor up to 70% of transactions,On the other hand, the proportion has decreased to 3%.
Regulatory pressures as cash and triggers for tornadoes
One reason analysts and developers have shown to explain this fall is what happened in August 2022 at Tornado Cash, Ethereum’s trading mixing service authorized by the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).
OFAC blamed him Promote money laundering of illegal originsand ordered regulatory companies and entities that do not interact with their intelligent contracts.
However, on March 21st last year (a few days before verifier censorship), economic sanctions were constructed against tornado cash, overturning the 2022 regulations.
In that context, Anthony Sassano, an independent educator at Ethereum, said in January 2025:
«…The US government. He is now ordered to prioritize the Ethereum ecosystem for better censorship resistance technology (focus, EPB) work and reverse tornado cash sanctions».
In March he added: «In August 2022, OFAC included cash tornado contracts on its list of sanctions. Ethereum Ecosystem has since worked tirelessly to prioritize solutions to strengthen Ethereum’s censorship resistance (focus, EPB, etc.).
The Focil and EPB mentioned by Sassano are technical improvements to mitigate the capabilities of a set of verification devices or validators Exclude transactions.
Focil is a tool included in Improvement Proposal 7805 (EIP-7805), so the first entity can include transactions in a block, but the EPB separates the ability to propose a block to build it, reducing the risk of coordinated censorship.
Other ecosystem participants agreed that censorship reductions may be related By exclusion of certain authorized contractsas well as those of tornado cash, and also reduces regulatory pressure by the US government.
“That’s probably because they eliminated some of the OFAC, which are less tornado cash and US government regulations,” commented developer Anthony Caravelo, but he closed, “censorship hasn’t been resolved.”
Another user on the line asserted, “this was due to the exclusion of several contracts approved by OFAC, including tornadoes, not to allow verifiers to stop censorship.”
In this way, these voices in the community showed no improvements in censorship resistance levels directly occurred. Internal protocol modifications or validator behaviorbut was influenced by external facts.
Finally, in early June, Tomasz Stańczak, executive director of the Ethereum Foundation, recalled that resistance to censorship is a central feature to secure the Ethereum Network. It’s still open in neutral to all participants regardless of the jurisdiction or origin of the fund.
