Crypto glossary
Censorship resistance
Censorship resistance is a network's ability to let anyone transact without a company, government or validator group being able to block or reverse the payment.
On a censorship-resistant blockchain, a valid transaction that pays a reasonable fee will eventually be included, because block production is spread across many independent parties in different jurisdictions. If one miner or validator refuses it, another will pick it up. That property, more than speed or cost, is what distinguishes public blockchains from conventional payment systems.
The debate became concrete after the US Treasury sanctioned Tornado Cash in 2022. Some Ethereum relays and builders began excluding transactions involving sanctioned addresses, and dashboards started tracking the share of OFAC-compliant blocks. Ethereum researchers responded with proposals such as inclusion lists, which let validators force transactions into blocks.
Resistance is never absolute and can erode quietly. Concentration in a few pools, staking providers, block builders or RPC providers creates choke points that regulators can pressure. Stablecoin issuers can freeze tokens at the contract level, and front-ends can block users even when the underlying chain cannot.
Example
A transaction from a sanctioned address is ignored by several large block builders, but a smaller validator that builds its own blocks includes it a few slots later.