Despite Tornado Cash Fiasco, Bitcoin SV Launches ‘Blacklist Manager’ Tool
Bitcoin SV has launched the “Blacklist Manager”, which enables miners to freeze lost or stolen tokens “to comply with court orders” and aid in asset recovery.
A tweet announcing the new feature opened with an analogy of gold turning to lead when stolen and back to gold if returned.
“Imagine if gold turned to lead when it was stolen. If the thief gives it back, it turns into gold again,’ #SatoshiNakamoto
We proudly advertise #BlacklistManager the first software tool allows #Bitcoinminers to comply with court orders to freeze lost/stolen coins: pic.twitter.com/a5M7bGMbgG
— Bitcoin SV (@Bitcoin_SV_) 5 October 2022
Bitcoin SV stated that the Blacklist Manager feature is consistent with the original Bitcoin Whitepaper in that it functions similarly to the “now retired” notification system, which served as a network messaging system.
Bitcoin SV Blacklist Manager
To enable Blacklist Manager, Bitcoin SV miners must install and run the program along with their node.
The system relies on “notaries”, which bind miners to orders to freeze coins. The team described the notary’s role as equivalent to bailiffs. In it, bailiffs are responsible for maintaining courtroom security in the old world, among other duties.
“The notary acts analogously to a bailiff for conventional assets, translating legal documents into machine-readable format and broadcasting it to miners.”
Essentially, the Blacklist Manager excludes frozen UTXOs from being written into transaction blocks. Miners who do not install the program risk falling out of consensus with the BSV chain, causing their blocks to be orphaned by the rest of the network.
Bitcoin SV said this feature “will allow rightful owners of digital assets to enforce their property rights” if tokens are lost or stolen. However, critics have said that it also makes BSV censorship much easier.
Censorship controversies
The basis for Blacklist Manager is dependent on obtaining a valid court order. However, court orders do not always do justice in the interest of the people or even reflect moral judgments.
For example, court orders, among other strategies, were used against Canadian Truckers in February to suppress their right to demonstrate over vaccine mandates.
Twitter user @BitMax offered their perspective by pointing out a lack of clarity over which jurisdictions’ courts can issue a court order recognized by the Blacklist Manager.
What about sanctions lists like OFAC? Is it just the US list or are there also Germany, Russian, Chinese lists? What if a country does not like competition and puts the addresses of its competitors on such lists. Or if they get a court order to stop a competitor?
This is bad centralization!
— BitMax (@BitMax14) 5 October 2022
In addition, current literature does not explain whether notaries public have fail-safes to verify court documents and avoid accepting and processing false court orders.
Remember that it is a court order or “document of equivalent force”. They will claim that this is that document pic.twitter.com/Kmxj46l7Au
— a void (leaks) (@Tak_Horigoshi) 5 October 2022
A Twitter user doubts that Satoshi Nakamoto supports a feature that interferes with direct peer-to-peer transfers, especially not by court order.
