OpenSea Banned Iranian Users As US Sanctions Talks Enhance

OpenSea banned Iranian users from its platform as the US Sanctions talks enhance and Twitter users complained about their accounts being deactivated without any notice so let’s read more about it in today’s latest cryptocurrency news.

OpenSea banned Iranian users from its platform with the users claiming their accounts were terminated back on Thursday in what is developing into a bigger discussion about international sanctions and Web3 platforms. A few users took it to Twitter, posting screenshots of their account history being deleted as well as other users that manage verified collections reporting that these collections were removed.

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

The restrictions are a result of the US sanctions against the Iranian government which prevent US companies from providing services to any users based in Iran. OpenSea is a US company based in New York and incorporated in Delaware. This is not the first time the crypto industry went up against the gray area of sanction laws like the Ethereum company ConsenSys that barred a group of students from the coding academy back in November citing similar restrictions.

Also as reported earlier, OpenSea disabled features while the contract migration process is completed and all bids and purchases are made unavailable to ensure that the listings are protected. The week-long period that OpenSea gave users to migrate their NFT listings ended today. After the deadline, the platform announced that some features on the site could not be available because of the migration. OpenSea pushed for a smart contract and urged to start a migration of their NFT listings from the old contract to the new one. The marketplace mentioned that the upgrade brings more features like bulk listings and descriptive signatures while ensuring all of the inactive listings expire.

The Opensea Marketplace launched an investment arm as well as community grants program. The platform is valued at $13.3 billion and generated more than $5 billion in NFT trading volume. OpenSea the leading marketplace in the NFT industry announced that it will launch an investment arm to fund Web3 startups and projects as well as community grants program to support the community initiatives which will benefit the wider Web3 and NFT ecosystem. OpenSea Ventures will provide more funding, technical support, advice, and strategic connections alike to portfolio companies.