OpenSea bans Iranian users from using its services, causing uproar

The biggest NFT marketplace, OpenSea, is purportedly banning Iranian users from its platform, causing uproar among NFT collectors and reinvigorating debate about decentralization in the crypto sector.

Iranian OpenSea users began complaining on Twitter on Thursday morning that their accounts were being deactivated or deleted out of the blue, without any warning. In a tweet that swiftly gained attention, Iranian NFT artist “Bornosor” voiced displeasure to their 4,700 followers, receiving 342 retweets and over a thousand likes in 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 (@Bornosor) March 3, 2022

Opensea expressly prohibits sanctioned users and users in sanctioned territories from using its services under our Terms of Service. It has a zero-tolerance policy for sanctioned individuals or entities, as well as anyone who lives in sanctioned countries, using our services. If the NFT marketplace discovers individuals breaking its sanctions policy, it can immediately ban the accounts associated with them.

OpenSea complies with US sanctions

According to existing US sanctions, American companies do not have the authority to provide goods or services to anyone headquartered in any sanctioned countries, including Iran, North Korea, Syria, and now Russia. Notably, OpenSea is a firm based in the United States, having its headquarters in New York.

OpenSea’s activities have revived debate over whether huge blockchain-based companies and services are sufficiently decentralized, with MetaMask joining in on sanction-based retribution.

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

It is important to note that Venezuelan customers were unintentionally blocked from accessing their MetaMask wallets, according to MetaMask’s Twitter account. This came after Infura, a blockchain development firm, accidentally widened the scope of its sanctions-related crackdowns.

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

As the White House tightens its economic sanctions on Russia, cryptocurrencies and digital assets such as NFTs are coming under more regulatory scrutiny.

This isn’t the first time the cryptocurrency industry has been tangled up in the complexities of international sanctions, with many crypto exchanges engaging in the argument about freezing Russian cryptocurrency holdings. Binance, the world’s largest exchange, declined to block “innocent” Russian customers’ accounts.