Vitalik Buterin shared his views on Soneium, a Layer-2 network built on Ethereum
Users reported issues with two meme coins, Aibo and Toro, which were seemingly blocked from transactions.
These tokens, inspired by Sony’s robotic dogs and a PlayStation mascot, had their smart contracts flagged as “forbidden”, according to a blockchain explorer, Blockscout.
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Soneium explained that the restrictions were part of measures to protect intellectual property. The platform’s team clarified in a post on X that these were temporary controls on specific contracts.
Layer-2 solutions like Soneium improve transaction speed and reduce costs by bundling multiple transactions and processing them more efficiently. These networks use a sequencer to manage transaction orders before submitting them to the main Ethereum network.
In Soneium’s case, its centralized sequencer allows the network to restrict certain transactions but avoids full censorship.
Buterin pointed out that this design choice creates what he described as a “large speed bump”. He stated in a January 15 post on X, "Businesses can make very fine-grained choices around how much control they keep vs. give to users. But whatever rules they choose, that's what the rules are".
Soneium acknowledged that its restrictions apply only to its public endpoints, meaning users could still access the blockchain through alternative means.
Soneium’s design relies on Optimism's
On January 5, Buterin published a blog post proposing a 'soft pause' on global computing power. What is his purpose? Read the full story.
