Quote from: mikeywith on December 10, 2023, 10:20:35 PM

Quote from: HmmMAA on December 10, 2023, 07:35:12 PM

what happens if his pool mine an OFAC banned transaction ? Can he say that it's not his decision which transactions can be added to a block ? If mined , as a US citizen , can he face jail time ?

This is where user-generated block templates can be useful, the the pool operator proves that they have no say on what goes into the block templates, and they would have a better legal position, although not perfectly protected but at least something valuable you can use to defend yourself.

I really think someone with the skill set that Luke has would have served BTC better if they built something decentralized that actually works, an enhanced version of P2pool where miners bear the entire responsibility of the transactions they mine, this would be a lot harder for the state to stop or impose any sort restrictions on, think of it as torrent, do we really think that governments don't want to ban it altogether? they probably want -- they just can't.

Compare that to a centralized server that hosts "illegal" content and sits on U.S soil, as I said before, a 2 line letter and the law enforcement will shut it down.

More pools aren't the solution to censorship resistance, even worse is when those pools are centralized and owned by a known figure like Luke, it makes taking it down a piece of cake.

A regulator isn't going to let the pool operator off the hook just because they let their clients create block templates. The operator still disburses payments to the clients creating the block templates. Regulators do not care if you didn't generate illicit content, they care that you are serving it to your clients. A pool operator who serves the public will be regulated, as all public service providers are. They would probably be better off going private, and approving all client connections, if they are worried about getting regulated.