Some OpenSea users may have received a real shock when trying to access their account. Many profiles, without issuing any prior warning, have been deleted by the administrator. What is going on?
Social media full of heated statements
On March 3, OpenSea users sparked many discussions on Twitter regarding the alleged deletion of their accounts. One of the clearest voices belonged to an influencer nicknamed Bornosor.eth.
As the content of his statement states:
“This is absolutely not a good day. Woke up to my @opensea trading account being deactivated/deleted without notification or any explanation, hearing many similar reports from other Iranian artists and collectors. What the hell is going on? Does the OS immediately purge its users based on their country?”
Highly respected figure on the OpenSea platform Parin Heidari, whose account was also deleted, went even further in her words:
“What you are doing to us artists is even worse than what they have done to us [the Iranian government – editor’s note]. Because you assume that you are a decentralized platform. If you don’t care about Iranian artists, fine. At least care about our NON-Iranian collectors.”
A heated discussion has also erupted on sites like Reddit. As can be seen from the above tweets, and from the statements of any other people who have been harmed in this situation, the issue only concerns Iranian citizens.
OpenSea’s response
OpenSea, a platform under fire after many attacks and multiple Twitter flags, in an attempt to counter the image disaster, decided to finally address the issue. Later the same day it commented as follows:
“We are very sorry to the artists and creators affected, but OpenSea is subject to strict sanctions policies. We are a U.S.-based company and abide by U.S. sanctions laws, which means we are required to block people on U.S. sanctions lists from using OpenSea.”
Despite the justification for the behavior, the platform has been under constant fire. There have been many people who question its operation in this situation. According to some sources, works of art, and trading in them, are not subject to any form of sanction. There are also doubts among people of Iranian descent who have lived outside their country for many years and have no ties with it. The above comment was so far the only official statement of the platform against the wave of anger of its users.
