Toxic ink on immutable paper: content moderation for ethereum Input Data Messages (IDMs)
File(s)
Accepted version
Author(s)
Xiong, xihan
Wang, zhipeng
Wang, Qin
Knottenbelt, William
Type
Conference Paper
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.
Date Issued
2026-02-02
Date Acceptance
2025-10-04
Citation
2025 IEEE 24th International Conference on Trust, Security and Privacy in Computing and Communications (TrustCom), 2026, pp.1687-1696
ISSN
2324-9013
Publisher
IEEE
Start Page
1687
End Page
1696
Journal / Book Title
2025 IEEE 24th International Conference on Trust, Security and Privacy in Computing and Communications (TrustCom)
Copyright Statement
©2025 IEEE. This is the author’s accepted manuscript made available under a CC-BY licence in accordance with Imperial’s Research Publications Open Access policy (www.imperial.ac.uk/oa-policy)
License URL
Source
24th IEEE International Conference on Trust, Security and Privacy in Computing and Communications (TRUSTCOM 2025)
Publication Status
Published
Start Date
2025-11-14
Finish Date
2025-11-17
Coverage Spatial
Guiyang, China