According to CoinDesk, panelists at the recent BUIDL Asia summit in Seoul discussed the issue of racist meme coins and how to best deal with them. Austin Federa, the Solana Foundation's head of strategy, argued that wallet developers should have the right to institute a block list, while users should have the ability to reveal something if they want to. He compared the situation to internet service providers (ISPs) not being expected to filter out offensive content, as the internet and crypto both operate on a largely permissionless basis.
Marc Zeller, founder of the Aave Chan Initiative, an Aave DAO delegate and service provider, offered a different perspective, pointing out that under European Union law, there is an obligation to filter content. He cited France as an example, where ISPs are legally obligated to block certain content, such as Holocaust denialism. Zeller emphasized the importance of free speech and censorship resistance in the blockchain ethos, but acknowledged that different cultures have different approaches to the issue. Federa also noted that racist meme coins are minuscule compared to the scale of the crypto industry, and that some validators and nodes believe they have a legal obligation to censor certain content.
