The percentage of Ethereum blocks that comply with orders administered by the United States Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has now dropped to 47% – the lowest level since October 11.
The latest milestone for overhauling the censorship comes nearly three months after OFAC’s percentage of compliant blocks topped 79% on November 21.
OFAC-compliant blocks are those that exclude transactions involving parties approved by the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control.
The collapse of the blockchain could be seen as a victory for those who oppose censorship in the Ethereum ecosystem.
Blockchain consulting firm Labrys, which makes MEV Watch, said their fall may be due to more validators choosing to use MEV boost relays that do not censor transactions under OFAC requirements.
“In particular, BloXroute Max Profit relay, Ultrasound Money relay and Agnostic Boost relay have achieved a lot of market share changes.”
MEV-boost relay acts as a trusted mediator between block producers and block builders, which allows Ethereum validators to outsource block production to other block builders.
Lachlan Feeney, CEO of Labrys, said in a February 14 statement that he was pleased with how the Ethereum community has responded to the censorship issue since it first arose after the Merger.
He notes the fallout of censorship-compliant blocks is most important because they can be done without user-activated software forks (UASFs). He noted that “many members” of the Ethereum community had requested a soft fork before the Merge to combat censorship.
“I’m very proud of the Ethereum community for the progress we’ve made on this issue,” Feeney said, adding:
“When we released the MevWatch tool that drew attention to flaws in Ethereum, the community didn’t stick their heads in the sand but instead rose to the occasion and made significant progress in addressing the issue.”
However, “there is still more work to be done,” Feeney stressed.
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OFAC most sanctioned Ether (ETH) and USD Coin (USDC) wallet addresses that transacted using the Ethereum-based privacy mixing tool Tornado Cash on August 8.
After the first 24 hours of Ethereum’s new proof-of-stake consensus mechanism on September 16, only 9% of blocks were OFAC-censored.
But this figure rose sharply over the next two months, reaching 79% on November 21.
The percentage of OFAC-compliant blocks then hovered in the 68-75% range until January 29 when it was 66%. Since then, it has steadily decreased despite some small spikes.