The world’s largest NFT marketplace has confirmed that it blocks users based on the US sanctions list.
US NFT marketplace OpenSea has begun banning Iranian users from accessing its platform, sparking outrage from NFT collectors and sparking a new debate about decentralization in the cryptocurrency space.
On Thursday morning, Iranian OpenSea users began posting on Twitter that their accounts were being deactivated or deleted without warning. Iranian NFT artist “Bornosor” expressed his frustration to his 4,700 followers, in a tweet that quickly gained attention, garnering 342 retweets and over a thousand likes within a few hours.
Bornosor stated: “NOT A GOOD MORNING. I woke up to my OpenSea trading account deactivated/deleted without notice or explanation.”
NOT A gm AT ALL
Woke up to me @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
An OpenSea spokesperson told Cointelegraph that the platform reserves the right to block users based on the sanctions imposed by the US.
“Our Terms of Service explicitly prohibit sanctioned users or users from sanctioned countries from using our services. We have a zero tolerance policy for the use of our services by sanctioned individuals or entities and persons located in sanctioned countries. If we discover individuals violating our sanctions policy, we take prompt action to ban associated accounts.”
Current US sanctions state that US companies may not supply goods or services to any user residing in a sanctioned country, including Iran, North Korea, Syria and now Russia. OpenSea is an American company based in New York.
These actions by OpenSea have sparked a new debate about whether large blockchain-based companies and services are properly decentralized, and MetaMask has joined in enforcing sanctions.
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
I have seen OpenSea and Metamask blacklist and block users that are on the sanctions list (countries like Iran, Cuba, Syria, etc.)
This was not the decentralized system!
This was not the deal!
According to the MetaMask Twitter account, Venezuelan users were accidentally banned from accessing their wallets after blockchain development firm Infura accidentally expanded the scope of its 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
MetaMask is a client-side wallet that strives to make the blockchain as accessible as possible to everyone. Infura had a configuration error this morning, but it has now been fixed.
Cryptocurrencies and digital assets such as NFTs continue to come under increasing regulatory scrutiny from the US government, as economic sanctions against Russia increase in severity.
OpenSea remains the largest NFT marketplace in the world, with more than $22 billion in sales since its inception.
This is not the first time the cryptocurrency industry has been caught up in the turmoil surrounding the complexities of international sanctions, with multiple cryptocurrency exchanges embroiled in the debate over freezing Russian crypto assets. The world’s largest exchange, Binance, refused to block accounts of “innocent” Russian customers.