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arXiv · 2510.10761

Toxic Ink on Immutable Paper: Content Moderation for Ethereum Input Data Messages (IDMs)

Xihan Xiong·Zhipeng Wang·Qin Wang·William Knottenbelt
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Abstract

Decentralized communication is becoming an important use case within Web3. On Ethereum, users can repurpose the transaction input data field to embed natural-language messages, commonly known as Input Data Messages (IDMs). However, as IDMs gain wider adoption, there has been a growing volume of toxic content on-chain. This trend is concerning, as Ethereum provides no protocol-level support for content moderation. We propose two moderation frameworks for Ethereum IDMs: (i) BUILDERMOD, where builders perform semantic checks during block construction; and (ii) USERMOD, where users proactively obtain moderation proofs from external classifiers and embed them in transactions. Our evaluation reveals that BUILDERMOD incurs high block-time overhead, which limits its practicality. In contrast, USERMOD enables lower-latency validation and scales more effectively, making it a more practical approach in moderation-aware Ethereum environments. Our study lays the groundwork for protocol-level content governance in decentralized systems, and we hope it contributes to the development of a decentralized communication environment that is safe, trustworthy, and socially responsible.

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Xihan Xiong, Zhipeng Wang, Qin Wang, William Knottenbelt. 2025-10-12. Toxic Ink on Immutable Paper: Content Moderation for Ethereum Input Data Messages (IDMs). https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.10761

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