Etherscan Made 100% Inaccessible by China's Great Firewall

Etherscan.io, one of the most widely used Ethereum block explorers, was found to be inaccessible from IP addresses inside of mainland China. According to the tests performed locally, the country’s Great Firewall, which is used by the government to regulate citizens’ access to foreign internet sites, has blocked the Ethereum blockchain data site. 

Greatfire.org, a site that monitors and stores a database of websites that are blocked in mainland China, recorded that Etherscan.io was still available for access, with “no censorship detected” as of Aug. 18 of this year in the country. 

The site’s record shows that Etherscan.io has become 100 percent blocked since Oct. 30, citizens inside mainland China could only access the site with a virtual private network (VPN). 

Greatfire's test on Etherscan.io. Source: Greatfire.org

Matthew Tan, Etherscan’s CEO, noticed that the site was blocked “within the last three months,” although he was unsure of the exact date. He explained that he was not sure why the block has occurred and “cannot speculate on what the reasons might be.” 

Matthew Graham, the CEO of Sino Global Capital, a blockchain investment firm, said: “This is another instance of friction between the decentralized and immutable technology of blockchain and the tightly controlled, centralized government of China. We should expect additional problems like these in the future as blockchain is integrated further into the Chinese economy and daily life.” 

Although it is unclear about the reasons behind blocking a blockchain explorer in China, there were reports last year accounting cryptocurrency users encoding censored articles regarding the #Metoo movement and a pharmaceutical scandal in China using Ethereum transactions to avoid internet censorship in the country.  

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