I am really excited for DutchX given its unique approach to market making on DEXs.
So today decided to check out the freshly deployed DutchX dapp on the Rinkeby testnet
Unfortunately I was welcomed by the screen below.
It turns out that the DutchX website automaticaly blocks people from these countries;
Afghanistan, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Côte d’Ivoire, Central African Republic, Crimea (Region of Ukraine), Cuba, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Guinea-Bissau, Iran, Iraq, Japan, Myanmar, Libya, Lebanon, Liberia, Russian Federation, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Uganda, United States of America, Vanuatu, Venezuela, Yemen, Zimbabwe.
I understand that there are legislative frameworks you need to abide by, but what happened to censorship resistance & financial inclusion?
The irony is that, some of these countries that DutchX has blocked are the ones that need these dapps the most.
From the Venezuelan money crisis in S. America to the blocking of social media sites sites in Uganda (where I live).
Don’t get me wrong, DutchX is a product of the Gnosis team & Gnosis is free to do what they want with it.
My greater concern here is that the decision taken by the Gnosis team to purposefully exclude users in order to abide by laws, may simply be a tiny fractal of what the Ethereum developer ecosystem may evolve to in the future.
Imagine an Ethereum Client or consensus rule update that discards transactions from nodes or computers with Zimbabwean IP addresses so it can be compliant with UN sanctions.
Or Dapps that refuse engagement from individuals with an ETH balance below $1 million dollars since they do not fit the “accredited investor” profile of the SEC.
While the two hypotheses above may be far fetched I feel like we are headed there one step at a time, slowly but surely starting with decisions made by projects like DutchX.
I think the Ethereum community is not rouge enough. Maybe this is where the BTC community beats us?