Remove NFTs of Artists In Sanctioned Countries, OpenSea is No Longer ‘Open’

As the Russian-Ukrainian conflict continues, geopolitical discussions are further expanded in the crypto space. The decentralization issue of OpenSea, the leader of the NFT marketplace, has also been brought to the forefront.

The Iranian-born artist Parin said she was included in the OpenSea sanction list. Not only was she no longer able to use OpenSea services, but all her NFT collections were also removed from OpenSea. The reason is that Parin is a user of Iranian descent.

Ironically, Parin was named a member of OpenSea's "amazing women" just last month.

OpenSea officially stated that the terms of service expressly prohibit sanctioned users or users in sanctioned regions from using OpenSea's services, including users in Iran, North Korea, Syria and Russia.

According to artist Parin, she has lived in Italy and the Netherlands for nearly 13 years.

X2Y2 -- another rising star of the NFT trading platform -- supports the consensus that art has no borders and decentralization, has listed all the artist's works on the same day, and displayed them on the homepage. Parin expressed his gratitude for this.

As a U.S. company, OpenSea has to comply with U.S. regulations, so its centralization problem has been criticized by the crypto community. Similar sanctions at present may further shake OpenSea’s trust in the crypto industry. If the US sanctions list is further expanded, OpenSea users in more countries may be affected.

By BitpushNews Chen Zou, Mary Liu

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