OpenSea, the world’s largest NFT marketplace, has been experiencing some major challenges in recent months. From hacks to lawsuits, 2022 started off on a rocky one for the platform. After barring Iranian consumers, the marketplace has found itself in the limelight once more.
After numerous Iranian OpenSea users began tweeting about their accounts being removed, the crypto community was notified. This was allegedly done with no previous notice. An Iranian user started off by saying that it wasn’t a good morning for the citizens of Iran. He further tweeted,
‘Where is decentralization?’ OpenSea users raise questions
The whole crypto sector began as a separate entity free of the constraints of centralized systems. The crypto-verse’s aim seeks to promote decentralization. However, given the existing state of affairs, decentralization was definitely fading away.
Additionally, with the entire Russia-Ukraine war in place, the US has been imposing sanctions on a variety of nations. As a result, Russia, North Korea, Iran, and Syria were subjected to severe sanctions. Because OpenSea is based in New York, it was obligated to follow the sanctions enforced by the US government. As per this, enterprises located in the United States were not permitted to provide their services to the aforementioned countries.
Elaborating on the same, OpenSea apologized to its users for the inconvenience. The world’s largest NFT marketplace said,
“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”
Furthermore, numerous members of the community spoke out, calling the entire situation an injustice to both developers and collectors of NFTs. One Twitter user pointed out that individuals who want to avoid sanctions would find a way to work around it.
MetaMask users face similar issues
It was also discovered that MetaMask and Infura have inadvertently blocked users from Venezuela from accessing their respective MetaMask wallets. This, however, was remedied in due course.