- Federa noted that there are validators and nodes that find it necessary to follow legal regulations to censor specific content.
- He referenced U.S. OFAC sanctions, which include restrictions on transactions with Ethereum Tornado Cash and North Korean cryptocurrency wallets.
The Solana Foundation has put forward a solution to the problem of offensive meme currencies, highlighting its ability to filter out such problematic content. During a panel at the BUIDL Asia summit in Seoul, they discussed how to handle meme coins containing racist names and other offensive topics.
Solana’s proposal involves digital wallet developers and decentralized exchanges being able to implement blocklists to filter out banned words, without requiring nodes to completely stop these tokens.
Austin Federa, strategic director of the Solana Foundation, argued that it is impractical to anticipate service providers to perform inappropriate content filtering, since, similar to the internet, the cryptocurrency sector operates primarily in a permissionless environment.
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In this context, Solana promotes that it is the applications, specifically wallets, that decide what kind of content they want to display, thus keeping the core network as a permissionless space.
This position contrasts with that of Marc Zeller, founder of the Aave Chan Initiative, who pointed out that under European Union law there is an obligation to filter content, citing legal obligations in France to block certain content, such as Holocaust denial. This underscores the variety of cultural approaches to censorship and freedom of expression.
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Federa likewise noted that certain validators and nodes feel they must comply with legal obligations to restrict some content. This is due to punitive measures applied by the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), which affected transactions with Ethereum Tornado Cash and North Korean cryptocurrency wallets, among other cases. The issue sparked intense discussion in the Ethereum community regarding how to address these censorship guidelines.
“This is very similar to what happens in the United States, when a 20-member hate group protests in front of a church. And they get on the national news, and it’s a big deal. But if you look at it, it’s 20 people, and all they want is to get attention,” he said.
Finally, Federa relativized the importance of racist meme coins, comparing them to minority hate groups seeking attention, suggesting that, in the grand scheme of things, their impact is minimal compared to the scale of crypto in general.
For Solana, the ability to filter out offensive meme coins represents several advantages:
- It maintains the integrity and inclusivity of the platform: By filtering offensive content, Solana can provide a safer and more welcoming environment for a wide range of users.
- Preserves the permissionless nature of the network: The solution allows Solana’s core network to remain open and unrestricted, delegating filtering responsibility to higher-level applications, such as wallets.
- Balances freedom of speech with responsibility: While supporting freedom of speech, Solana’s strategy recognizes the importance of mitigating the harm that offensive content can cause, allowing for some level of moderation without compromising the fundamental principles of the blockchain.
- Addresses legal and cultural concerns: By allowing apps to filter content according to their own policies, Solana can adapt to varying laws and cultural sensitivities without imposing a single policy on the entire network.
