OpenSea clamps down on Iran-based users amid US sanctions
OpenSea users in Iran will no longer be able to access the services of the leading NFT marketplace, thanks to US sanctions.
Although the company is yet to release an official statement regarding the restrictions, a representative of OpenSea reportedly told Decrypt that the users are located in sanctioned territories.
OpenSea blocks users and territories on the U.S. sanctions list from using our services—including buying, selling, or transferring NFTs on OpenSea—and our Terms of Service explicitly prohibit sanctioned users or users in sanctioned territories from using our services […] If we find individuals to be in violation of our sanctions policy, we take swift action to ban the associated accounts.
A number of OpenSea users with Iran IP addresses took to Twitter to complain about the issue. One user claimed that his verified collection and account history had been deleted.
Same! My verified collection with 218 ETH volume traded was just disappeared pic.twitter.com/IhJDuJZPuK
— Parin (@ParinHeidari) March 3, 2022
The current sanctions from the US outline that American companies are not allowed to offer their goods or services to users based in sanctioned countries like Iran, Syria, North Korea, and now Russia. OpenSea is a US-based company and its latest wave of restrictions is arguably linked to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Not only @opensea
— Bornosor.eth (@Bornosor) March 3, 2022
But MetaMask itself is also BANNING every wallet associated with an Iranian IP address.
🚨 THIS IS NOT A DRILL 🚨
Iranian People are losing access to their NON CUSTODIAL Wallets with this update.
This is UNACCEPTABLE! pic.twitter.com/qDEBcezJba
OpenSea’s decision to block users in Iran has sparked fresh debates about decentralization. Apart from OpenSea, the Ethereum-based cryptocurrency wallet MetaMask has also moved to enforce sanction-based crackdowns.
I saw #OpenSea and #Metamask blacklisting and shutting down users on the sanction list.(countries like Iran, Cuba, Syria and so on)
— Khashayar sharifaee (@sharifaee) March 3, 2022
This was not the decentralized system!
This was not the deal!
Responding to its decision to also block Venezuelan users, MetaMask claimed that users in the region were accidentally blocked from accessing their wallets after blockchain development company Infura broadened the base of its sanctions-based crackdowns.
In the case of MetaMask, users are able to view their balances and transaction histories but are unable to interact with the Ethereum blockchain.
It is safe to say that the decentralized crypto world is not so decentralized after all.
If Metamask/Infura is open and willing to block countries like Venezuela by IP addresses, it's only a matter of time until they are forced by regulators to censor individual people's IP addresses. We need alternatives immediately, hoping that Alchemy and others don't do this
— Larry Cermak (@lawmaster) March 3, 2022
