<ul>
 	<li>The reasons for this behavior are unknown, and F2pool has not issued an official statement.</li>
 	<li>Dubinets believes that if more miners censor these transactions, Zcash will become unusable.</li>
</ul>
Lev Dubinets, a computer scientist, recently published a report accusing the F2Pool mining farm of censoring Zcash's armored transactions. The computer scientist ignores the reasons for this behavior but assures that it could make the blockchain unusable.

Dubinets affirmed that F2pool has been ignoring for two years most of the armored transactions of the network, prioritizing the confirmation of other trades.

Privacy in Zcash is optional, so users can choose whether or not to use a type of address known as shielded. The coin history of these addresses is protected by a zero-knowledge test, which makes them more private. An armored transaction is an operation in which both the sender and the receiver have shielded addresses. This type of operations is those that are being ignored by the F2pool mining farm, according to Dubinets.

The computer scientist pointed out that of the 86,849 armored transactions carried out so far this year, F2pool has only confirmed a total of 120. The figure is petite considering that F2pool is the second largest mining group in Zcash, with 18% of its hash rate. It also estimates that with this processing power the farm has managed to confirm a total of 15,000 transactions, the vast majority of which are unarmoured.

Lev Dubinets pointed out that F2pool's selective attitude dates back to April 2017. Over the years, however, it has become more remarkable. The computer scientist fears that more miners will decide, like F2Pool, to censor this type of transaction, as this could cause severe problems in Zcash's network. As fewer miners wish to confirm armored purchases, they will become more expensive and could even congest the network.
<h1 style="text-align: center">Censorship or low profitability?</h1>
F2pool has not issued any statement denying the report or explaining its reasons for censoring the protected transactions in Zcash. As a result, Internet users, along with Dubinets, have speculated on the possible causes of this behavior.

Some users point out that F2pool does not want to engage in illegal activities due to regulations. Private transactions have a more significant potential to be linked to a murky business, so some companies prefer not to relate to them. However, contrary to this belief, F2pool is also involved in the mining of Monero, Grin, and Zcoin, chains of privacy-centered blocks.

Twitter user @OhGoodAGirl noted that F2pool might not have the infrastructure to confirm Zcash's armored transactions. Satofishi, one of the developers of F2pool's Zcash mining program, also supported the premise. According to one tuit, he said he hadn't covered specific mining codes in 2016 because he didn't consider them so important; a situation that could happen with other developers.
<p style="text-align: center"> <img class="wp-image-120861 aligncenter" src="https://www.cryptoknowmics.com/crypto/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/1-6-300x140.jpg" alt="" width="405" height="189" /></p>
Dubinets is not so sure that F2pool does not have a mechanism to mine these transactions, given that it has been able to confirm at least 120 such transactions in recent months. However, it does not rule out the possibility that the group has decided not to mine any more armored transactions to avoid losing blocks in future network upgrades. A situation that already happened last year with the Sapling update that caused F2pool to lose up to 30 blocks.

Last but not least, <a href="https://www.finder.com.au/f2pool-is-censoring-shielded-zcash-transactions-for-reasons-unknown">some internet users</a> consider that F2pool engineers have discovered a mining advantage by avoiding armored transactions. Just like when empty mining blocks, users believe that there is a possibility that by taking only regular operations a more significant number of blocks can be confirmed in Zcash. In this sense, Dubinets suggests that it would be essential to research this sector and if necessary increase the reward for armored transactions.

Beyond the unanswered questions, some users feel that they can begin to change the rules of the miners' game. Dubinets suggested that one way to protect the Zcash network is to start using more armored transactions. In this way, miners would be forced to confirm private transactions and not just prioritize regular ones. He also suggested to the users that they will claim F2pool in their social networks since the behavior of the grouping goes against the excellent functioning of Zcash.

F2pool accused of censoring Zcash armored transactions

I am an industrial engineer specializing in blockchain. Enthusiast of cryptocurrencies and writing the latest news regarding the Crypto world.

F2pool accused of censoring Zcash armored transactions

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