{"ID":2856873,"CreatedAt":"2026-06-01T04:54:23.091178241Z","UpdatedAt":"2026-06-01T04:54:23.091178241Z","DeletedAt":null,"paper_url":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.10761","arxiv_id":"2510.10761","title":"Toxic Ink on Immutable Paper: Content Moderation for Ethereum Input Data Messages (IDMs)","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.","short_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....","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.10761","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2510.10761v1","authors":"[\"Xihan Xiong\",\"Zhipeng Wang\",\"Qin Wang\",\"William Knottenbelt\"]","published":"2025-10-12T19:02:57Z","proceeding":"cs.CR","tasks":"[\"cs.CR\"]","methods":"[]","has_code":false}