A tool to detect the different types of censorship that a mining pool can exercise against Bitcoin, has been launched this week by an independent developer.

The developer, identified under the pseudonym b10c , announced the launch of the website miningpool.observer, regarding the Bitcoin block that, as we reported in CriptoNoticias, was mined with a declaration of compliance with the regulations of the United States Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).

The browser allows you to check the templates generated as a preview of blocks, against the final version of the blocks , in order to compare their differences . The template or block template is generated from the Bitcoin Core client as a forecast of the ideal conformation of a block based on pending transactions and their optimal commissions, as well as the block size limit.

If the miners decide to include or exclude transactions to those that were contemplated in this preview, the result of the final block will be different . In this variation, the analysis would be concentrated to detect the criterion of the mining pools to confirm transactions.

Also, the explorer shows a list of the transactions that repeatedly are not have included in the blocks mined by the mining pools. Also, it shows transactions that are “in conflict”, that is, when two or more Bitcoin transactions use the same output (output) or UTXO.

The site manages a series of tags to identify the nature of the transactions it displays, but it also takes as a resource a list of addresses sanctioned by OFAC.

However, they clarify that transactions can also be omitted due to delays in their transmission between nodes . There is a possibility that the node in Miningpool.Observer has a different synchronization with the network than the nodes in the mining pools. Although the latency is not much, there may be variations.

Users of Bitcoin react against OFAC and Marathon

Faced with the block mined by the Marathon mining pool, which claims to comply with OFAC regulations, some users have started to send “sanctioned” bitcoins to the block’s coinbase address , which belongs to the mining group.

One of these transactions comes from a bitcoiner of Iranian nationality, which would conflict with OFAC’s prohibition to carry out financial or exchange transactions with Iranian persons or entities.

This is what is known as a dust attack, which consists of “dirtying” Bitcoin addresses with very small fractions of sanctioned bitcoins. two or identified as belonging to black or illegal markets.

Another user, sent bitcoins related to the black market of the dark web (dark net) known as Hydra, in what is a movement of users to demonstrate how Bitcoin works and why OFAC’s prohibitive approach is incompatible with the logic of this protocol.

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