# kaal:claim:3125827-018

**Claim.** In a distributed system, which cannot achieve constant perfect communication between nodes, it is never possible to determine with certainty that a block producer was censoring particular transactions rather than simply being unaware of them.

**Type.** failure  **Support.** argued

**Holds when.**

- imperfect communication between nodes
- block producers with discretion over transaction inclusion

**Source quote.**

> In a distributed system--which cannot achieve constant perfect communication between nodes--we can never certainly determine that a block producer was censoring certain transactions, instead of simply not being aware of them.

**From.** Craig Calcaterra, Wulf A. Kaal, *Secure Proof of Stake Protocol* (2018), 2.2 Soft attacks, page 10

**Cite as.** Craig Calcaterra, Wulf A. Kaal, Secure Proof of Stake Protocol (2018). SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3125827

**Verify.** sha256 of source PDF `598d9bd95e4af7a0a35328677c6bfc069f69f2e32c30c720b3a0be98a23a40cb` at https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wulfkaal/Academic-Papers/main/papers/pdf/Calcaterra%20and%20Kaal%20-%202018%20-%20Secure%20Proof%20of%20Stake%20Protocol.pdf

**Failure mode.** undetectable-censorship  (family: consensus-and-protocol-attack)

**Topics.** institutional-design

**Keywords.** censorship, detection-limits, block-production, distributed-systems

**Canonical form.** This markdown file is the canonical hashed representation of the claim. Its sha256 is the content hash used for attestation.