The crypto community is once again questioning Ethereum’s dependency on centralized web hosting services.
This time, the focus is on a web hosting service Hetzner, which takes care of roughly 16% of the remote Ethereum nodes (61% of the nodes are hosted remotely, or about 9.76% of all Ethereum nodes).
Hetzner’s August 23 Reddit post, which came up on Twitter recently, cautioned Ethereum users against using the platform for crypto-related purposes.
In that same tweet, Hetzner nearly acknowledged that there is a blanket ban on crypto.
A portion of the post stated that using Hetzner’s products for any mining-related purpose is prohibited, including Ethereum — regardless if it is run in PoS or PoW. Trading is included as well, which means it is considered a violation of the terms of service even if the trader only runs one node.
I know this is off topic, but if there are Hetzner customers who are using Ethereum, they should please read this: https://t.co/Lhlv3KAtUZ –Katie
— Hetzner (@Hetzner_Online) August 26, 2022
The company was “aware that there are many Ethereum users currently at Hetzner,” the post continued. Several Hetzner users responded, some of whom questioned the prohibition, and criticized the company’s allusion to a mining ban.
Hetzner does not accommodate crypto miners as the firm itself is primarily a web hosting service. Ironically, the platform is popular among the node operators.
In response to an interviewer’s request for an explanation of Hetzner’s anti-crypto stance, a sales representative claimed that it prohibits Ethereum and other crypto activity as “some tokens cause problems.”
It has been hotly debated in the past whether Ethereum’s reliance on platforms such as Hetzner and Amazon Web Service would benefit the decentralized nature of the network or not.
The current development follows weeks of debates about Ethereum’s ability to remain censorship-resistant in the wake of the Treasury’s Tornado Cash ban. When Ethereum completes the “Merge” transition to PoS, which is expected to happen next month, critics claim that Ethereum will be more vulnerable to attacks.
Vitalik Buterin, the creator of Ethereum, spoke on the subject and stated he would view compliance with a regulatory ban as an attack.
