Infura, censorship and crypto politics

I've used Ethereum network a couple of times in my life and for the most part, the gas fees have been ridiculous. You also need to take the fact that I'm quite familiar with interacting with hive into consideration, so paying any sort of fee stresses me.

Naturally, using Ethereum requires metamask and later on, I found out I could connect it to a number of other blockchains with the same wallet address. Unfortunately, the news that Infura, the platform that grants metamask access to Ethereum, now has to make decisions based on "compliance" is pretty damning.

Infura provides an endpoint that your code can 'point to', so that your requests to receive or record information(transactions) can always get to the network. And, of course, they return to you the information you've requested._source

Infura is just one API but it is widely regarded as the most efficient of the lot. Most wallet providers rely on Infura to access the Ethereum network.

I guess we could think of Infura in the same way we have different nodes to access Hive blockchain. If you use Hive Keychain, go to preferences and you'll see a couple of nodes in a list.

Now imagine one of these RPC nodes decides to prohibit users from accessing Hive blockchain because of some legal compliance in their country. Of course, it is not the end of the world, you can simply switch to another functioning node and problem is fixed.

What's the fuss about?

The real issue here is the censorship and the fact that a blockchain project is actually caving into circumventable things like "legal compliance. Dude, the entire industry is based on the exact opposite of legal compliance.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying crypto is illegal. I'm just saying that it doesn't give a fuck.

There's a slow a lot of fuss about the development because it happened on Ethereum, which, as you know, is the largest web 3 platform in the world.

Again, it is not the end of the world but you have to admit that it sets an ugly precedence. It also presents ammunition for all the anti-crypto champions to peddle their usual gripe.

Crypto in politics

How long do you think we'll have to wait before an American node provider decides to prohibit Russian Ip addresses from accessing a blockchain? Yes, a VPN fixes this but that shouldn't be needed in the first place.

As crypto gets deeper into politics, there will almost certainly be more actions like this. This is exactly what I was talking about when I expressed my concern with Ukraine accepting crypto donations and the flaws in the system that the conflict is exposing.

In Nigeria, we have a quote that goes "na from clap dance dey start"(Most Nigerian dance steps start with a clap).

A big part of why crypto adoption has been moving at a rapid pace is because of the ease of access to numerous investment opportunities in the space. If nodes start censoring certain countries because of trivial things like "legal compliance", then the space might be well and truly screwed.

At the end of the day, it is all politics and politicians meddling with forces beyond their control. The crypto industry has to either rise above it or just become another political plaything by crumbling under pressure.

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