A lawmaker from Arizona lawmaker is looking to protect blockchain node operators from potential prohibitions by local and county governments.
The bill, which was forwarded on February 6 to the Arizona House of Representatives, declares that “a city or town may not prohibit or otherwise restrict an individual from running a node on blockchain technology in a residence.”
It also has another section that applies to any likely county-level rules that could be made, with both elements saying that such rule-making would be a state issue rather than a local one.
It’s not entirely well-defined whether the bill is targeted directly at cryptocurrency miners specifically or all nodes. Nodes are the key infrastructure layer for such networks, with each keeping a copy of the blockchain’s transaction history that can then be shared from node to node in a peer-to-peer fashion.
“For the purposes of this section, ‘running a node on blockchain technology’ means providing computing power to validate or encrypt transactions in blockchain technology,” the bill explains.
The measure was put forward by Arizona State Representative Jeff Weninger (R-Chandler), the author of a 2017 bill enshrining the legality of blockchain signatures and smart contracts under state law.
Weninger’s bill gained massive support within the state’s legislature, and it was eventually formally signed into law by Governor Doug Ducey on March 29 of last year.
Public records reveal that the measure has since been passed to the House’s Rules and Commerce committees for more discussions.
