Just looking at mevwatch.info, they have a list of what proportion of blocks by different stakers are coming from censored relays. Generally if you’re optimizing for profit this number should be pretty high, because some of the better relays are US companies that apply US sanctions, but it shouldn’t be near 100%.
I’d assumed that the companies that would use censoring relays would be the very US-law-encumbered ones, like Coinbase and Kraken. But that’s not what we see. Those companies are down in the “profit-maximizing” section. The companies that we see close to 100% are:
“Hacked”, basically defunct defi platforms: Stakehound and Cream Finance
A history of fraud and/or bankrupt: BitFinex and Celsius
Binance, which is known for not being overly troubled by US regulations. (I don’t have an opinion on whether they’re fraudulent or not, but personally it’s not the kind of place I’d feel comfortable leaving my money overnight.)
The only one that fits the pattern I’d have expected is something called Ether Capital which seems to be a “tradfi gateway to crypto” type of outfit.
What do we think is going on?
