Since October 11, the proportion of Ethereum blocks that comply with orders made by the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has decreased to its current level of 47%, which is the lowest level since That date.

The latest breakthrough in the fight against censorship comes about two and a half months and a day after the proportion of OFAC-compliant blocks hit an all-time high of 79% on November 21.

OFAC-compliant blocks are those that do not include any transactions involving parties that have been blacklisted by the US Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control.

Those who oppose censorship within the Ethereum ecosystem may see a decrease in the number of supported blocks as a victory.

According to a statement published by blockchain consultancy Labrys, the creator of MEV Watch, the decline may be related to more validators choosing to use MEV booster relays that do not filter transactions in compliance with OFAC standards.

Most of the change in market share has been taken by the BloXroute Max Profit Relay, the Ultrasound Money Relay, and the Agnostic Boost Relay in particular.

MEV-boost relays play the role of trusted intermediaries between block producers and block builders, paving the way for Ethereum validators to delegate the construction of their blocks to third-party block builders.

Labrys CEO Lachlan Feeney issued a statement on Feb. 14 in which he expressed his satisfaction with the way the Ethereum community has reacted to the censorship issue since it first surfaced during the merge event.

He noted that the recent decrease in censorship-compliant blocks was especially noteworthy, since it was accomplished without the involvement of an activated user. soft fork (UASF). He noted that “many people” in the Ethereum community had requested the soft fork before the Merger to resist censorship.

“I am incredibly proud of the Ethereum community for the progress we have made on this issue,” Feeney said, adding: “When we released the MevWatch tool calling attention to a flaw within Ethereum, the community did not bury their heads in the dark. sand. but instead rose to the occasion and made significant progress in addressing the issue.” “When we released the MevWatch tool to bring attention to a flaw within Ethereum, the community didn’t put its head in the sand, but rather rose to the occasion and made significant progress.

However, as Feeney emphasized, “there is still a lot of work to be done.”

On August 8, OFAC sanctioned wallet addresses that transact using the Ethereum-based privacy scramble technology Tornado Cash. These wallet addresses are associated with Ether (ETH) and USD Coin (USDC).

On September 16, during the first 24 hours of Ethereum’s new proof-of-stake consensus mechanism, OFAC leaked only 9% of the blocks.

However, this number shot up dramatically over the next two months, reaching its all-time high of 79% on November 21.

After that, the proportion of blocks that are OFAC compliant remained between 68 and 75% until January 29, when it dropped to 66%. Since then, despite some brief increases, it has been steadily declining.