Marathon is not blocking transactions from specific wallets.
They are simply refusing the try to solve blocks with transactions inside from known bad actors.
Thats fine, it just means that there is more block rewards for the 99% of the mining majority that don’t care what is within a block, and will mine it no matter what.
You have got to remember, there is an over $100,000 reward to mine a block, someone will mine it. All Marathon is doing is saying they won’t mine for those blocks.
They are a mining investment company, they can decide if they do or don’t want to mine a block, they can’t enforce everyone else to not mine that block.
Edit: and one point to add to this, what Marathon is attempting to achieve is nothing more than a regulations and marketing ploy. Any “bad actor” they deem, could simply create a fresh brand new bitcoin wallet with zero historical data, and execute their transaction from that fresh wallet, and then marathon would be mining their transaction with no knowledge of who or what sent it.
meaning the company has started excluding transactions from entities
Marathon spokesman Jason Assad confirmed that the firm's first OFAC pool block censored some transactions
By excluding transactions between nefarious actors
And in your edit example, how would one go about funding a clean wallet without linking it back to oneself? Additionally, what if a hypothetical miner-governmental cartel made it a whitelisted type system, where one would need preapproval to transact, instead of disapproval.
I did read the article, and if you actually understand the tech behind blockchain, all they are saying is their miners refuse to mine blocks that contain transactions from known bad actors.
That’s literally all they are doing. They are not capable to rearrange the mempool.
In my edited example, he could utilize any no-kyc cross chain swap protocol, back and forth into a fresh wallet. He may have to wait for a miner to eventually mine (they will) his initial transaction, but once they do, and he’s in a fresh wallet, he’s effectively a ghost. Especially if he swaps to monero and then back to bitcoin fresh wallet.
It should be noted that Marathon is mining “compliant” blocks of its own volition and that nothing in the current U.S. regulatory or legal code explicitly mandates that practice for miners. >
They are only mining blocks
That are compliant, meaning that contain no transactions from known bad actors.
They are just costing their business revenue that another miner will gladly scoop up.
Just because your transaction is in the mempool it doesn’t mean a miner has to pick it up and confirm it. And if it isn’t picked up for a long time it can get canceled and returned to you from the mempool
Simple as that, they choose transactions from mempool, and then build a valid block. There is no globally broadcasted "valid template", to build canonical blocks, empty blocks are literally just as valid as full 2MB blocks, assuming proper hash was made.
They don't just throw their hands up and say "Welp, I just don't wanna mine anything because the mempool is full of baaaaad transactions." That premise you put forth is pants-on-head levels of retarded.
Just because they won’t mine blocks with those transactions, doesn’t mean nobody else can.
They are simply only hurting their revenue.
Which is why they stopped doing it.
What you are worried about, would be more feasible in the early days of bitcoin where there wasn’t millions of individual miners not associated to any pool.
Marathon is not blocking transactions from specific wallets.
They are simply refusing the try to solve blocks with transactions inside from known bad actors.
Thats fine, it just means that there is more block rewards for the 99% of the mining majority that don’t care what is within a block, and will mine it no matter what.
You have got to remember, there is an over $100,000 reward to mine a block, someone will mine it. All Marathon is doing is saying they won’t mine for those blocks.
They are a mining investment company, they can decide if they do or don’t want to mine a block, they can’t enforce everyone else to not mine that block.
Edit: and one point to add to this, what Marathon is attempting to achieve is nothing more than a regulations and marketing ploy. Any “bad actor” they deem, could simply create a fresh brand new bitcoin wallet with zero historical data, and execute their transaction from that fresh wallet, and then marathon would be mining their transaction with no knowledge of who or what sent it.
Come on dude, did you even read the article?
And in your edit example, how would one go about funding a clean wallet without linking it back to oneself? Additionally, what if a hypothetical miner-governmental cartel made it a whitelisted type system, where one would need preapproval to transact, instead of disapproval.
I did read the article, and if you actually understand the tech behind blockchain, all they are saying is their miners refuse to mine blocks that contain transactions from known bad actors.
That’s literally all they are doing. They are not capable to rearrange the mempool.
In my edited example, he could utilize any no-kyc cross chain swap protocol, back and forth into a fresh wallet. He may have to wait for a miner to eventually mine (they will) his initial transaction, but once they do, and he’s in a fresh wallet, he’s effectively a ghost. Especially if he swaps to monero and then back to bitcoin fresh wallet.
They are only mining blocks That are compliant, meaning that contain no transactions from known bad actors.
They are just costing their business revenue that another miner will gladly scoop up.
Which is why they stopped:
https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2021/05/31/bitcoin-miner-marathon-will-no-longer-censor-transactions-ceo-says/
Coinbureau
Simple as that, they choose transactions from mempool, and then build a valid block. There is no globally broadcasted "valid template", to build canonical blocks, empty blocks are literally just as valid as full 2MB blocks, assuming proper hash was made.
They don't just throw their hands up and say "Welp, I just don't wanna mine anything because the mempool is full of baaaaad transactions." That premise you put forth is pants-on-head levels of retarded.
They cannot remove addresses from the mempool.
This proves my exact point.
Just because they won’t mine blocks with those transactions, doesn’t mean nobody else can.
They are simply only hurting their revenue.
Which is why they stopped doing it.
What you are worried about, would be more feasible in the early days of bitcoin where there wasn’t millions of individual miners not associated to any pool.