OpenSea, the world’s largest NFT marketplace, has updated its list of banned countries according to the US sanctions list and has many bringing up the issue of decentralisation.
We’re truly sorry to the artists & creators that are impacted, but OpenSea is subject to strict policies around sanctions law. We’re a US-based company and comply with US sanctions law, meaning we’re required to block people in places on the US sanctions lists from using OpenSea
— OpenSea (@opensea) March 3, 2022
US-based OpenSea has reportedly begun barring Iranian users from its platform, which has led to outrage from NFT collectors and sparked a fresh debate regarding decentralisation in the crypto space. The list has expanded since last week, adding Iran to the list after only users in separatist areas of Ukraine were banned, along with users from Venezuela who were added to the list in error.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the US Department of the Treasury administers and enforces economic and trade sanctions based on US foreign policy and national security goals against targeted foreign countries and regimes, terrorists, international narcotics traffickers, those engaged in activities related to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and other threats to the national security, foreign policy or economy of the US.
US Office of Foreign Assets Control
Iranian Artist Vents to 4,700 Followers
Last week, Iranian users of OpenSea woke up and started posting on Twitter that their accounts had been deactivated or deleted without prior warning from the platform. “Bornosor”, an NFT artist from Iran, vented his frustrations to 4,700 followers in a tweet that gained traction very swiftly, garnering 342 retweets and 1,000+ likes within just a few hours:
NOT A gm AT ALL
Woke up to my @opensea trading account being deactivated/deleted without notice or any explanation, hearing lots of similar reports from other Iranian artists & collectors.
What the hell is going on?
Is OS straight up purging its users based on their country now?— Bornosor.eth (@Bornosor) March 3, 2022
According to an OpenSea spokesperson, OpenSea reserves the right to block users based on sanctions:
“Our terms of service explicitly prohibit sanctioned users or users in sanctioned territories from using our services. We have a zero-tolerance policy for the use of our services by sanctioned individuals or entities and people located in sanctioned countries. If we find individuals to be in violation of our sanctions policy, we take swift action to ban the associated accounts.”
As it stands, current US sanctions outline that American companies are not allowed to provide goods or services to any users based in countries on the sanctions list, including Iran, North Korea, Syria, and now also Russia:
I saw #OpenSea and #Metamask blacklisting and shutting down users on the sanction list.(countries like Iran, Cuba, Syria and so on)
This was not the decentralized system!
This was not the deal!— Khashayar sharifaee (@sharifaee) March 3, 2022
Actions from OpenSea Provoke Decentralisation Debate
The actions taken by OpenSea have fostered new debates about whether large blockchain-based firms and services are adequately decentralised, with the MetaMask wallet joining in on enforcing sanctions:
MetaMask is a client-side wallet that strives to make the blockchain maximally accessible to everyone. Infura had a misconfiguration this morning, but it has been corrected now. https://t.co/CYAhvGunHo
— MetaMask 🦊💙 (@MetaMask) March 3, 2022
According to MetaMask’s Twitter account, Venezuelan users were accidentally banned from accessing their wallets after blockchain development company Infura inadvertently broadened the scope of its sanctions to the South American country.
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