Hetzner bans running Ethereum PoS nodes
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HN engineers debated the tradeoffs between cloud convenience and raw server economics, database indexing strategies, and resisting premature architectural complexity.
Unironically a good thing. There is currently a fair amount of centralization based on hosting site[1]. AWS is first at 48%, Hetzner second at 14%. These percentages are among cloud nodes, which account for 62%. If taken as percentage of total Eth nodes, they would be lower[2]. People are encouraged to host at home, or at least in some small hosting provider. There was a hashtag going on a few days ago, #stakefromhome[3], with people showing their setups.
[1] https://ethernodes.org/networkType/Hosting ↗
[2] https://ethernodes.org/network-types ↗
[3] https://twitter.com/hashtag/stakefromhome ↗
Edit: Clarified hosted vs residential
It seems that it's already in the ToS since 2021-10-27 (https://www.hetzner.com/assets/Uploads/downloads/AGB-en.pdf ↗, Wayback Machine provides evidence of non-tampering https://web.archive.org/web/20220209111333im_/https://www.hetzner.com/assets/Uploads/downloads/AGB-en.pdf ↗), just enforced today presumably due to electricity usage (at least at the time that document was drafted).
I think we are running into a real issue where private industry with too much power can effectively make something that is legal illegal. For example Visa refusing to process credit cards for adult websites.
Maybe it is time for government to step in and even though these companies are private, of it becomes a system wide problem they need to force them to host such legal content. Especially companies that want to be considered transparent carriers such as the phone company.
For example requiring all business to accept cash as payment.
What is the point of having laws of industry in the end decides what is legal?
Doesn't look good if 14% of these nodes are sitting on Hetzner and we already have a concerning amount of centralization on more than 51% of these servers on AWS.
It seems that the centralization will get worse with the move to PoS in both cases. It doesn't matter what the Ethereum maximalists / supports or even the Ethereum foundation says otherwise at this point.
Title as it stands right now ("Hetzner bans running Ethereum PoS nodes") is incorrect. Hetzner disallows running any software related to any cryptocurrencies, so be it mining, trading, storage of blockchain data for analysis, operating a node (mining/staking/farming/whatever). It doesn't seem to be specific to Ethereum (PoS or PoW) but generally about any sort of software that interacts with cryptocurrencies (or data coming from cryptocurrencies).
"Using our products for any application related to mining, even remotely related, is not permitted. This includes Ethereum. It includes proof of stake and proof of work and related applications. It includes trading. It is true for all of our products, except colocation. Even if you just run one node, we consider it a violation of our ToS. We are aware that there are many Ethereum users currently at Hetzner, and we have been internally discussing how we can best address this issue. If you, or any other potential customers are unsure about whether your use case will violate our ToS, please reach out to us. There is a general support form here (https://www.hetzner.com/support-form ↗) for people who aren't yet customers. Plus there is a live chat. You can see a chat icon here (https://www.hetzner.com/dedicated-rootserver ↗) on the far right side of the screen during our normal business hours, and click on it to chat directly with our technicians. If you are already a customer, you can reach out to us via your account on Robot/Cloud Console/konsoleH. --Katie"