Dapper Labs explains the reason for freezing the assets of Russians

What’s new? On October 6, Dapper, an NFT platform, froze the assets of Russian customers. Representatives of Dapper Labs explained that this is due to the eighth package of EU sanctions, which completely prohibits crypto companies from serving users from the Russian Federation. According to the statement, Dapper Labs’ payment processing and stored value service partner is subject to EU regulations. It instructed the company to take action against accounts belonging to those affected by the restrictions.

Dapper Labs’ statement

What else does the statement say? The Dapper Labs team stressed that the accounts of customers from Russia have not been blocked. Users can view their non-fungible tokens, and they also retain ownership of the assets. However, the ability to sell, purchase or transfer NFTs is completely unavailable.

What is known about Dapper Labs? The founder and CEO of the company is Roham Gharegozlou. Dapper Labs launched the blockchain game CryptoKitties on the Ethereum network in 2017 and the blockchain Flow in 2020. The latter is the basis of an ecosystem supported by leading sports associations, including the NBA, UFC, and NFL.

More details about the EU sanctions. On October 6, crypto companies were completely banned from serving Russian users, regardless of the amount of assets on their accounts. The team of the Binance crypto exchange said that so far it had not imposed new restrictions on users from Russia, but would leave the possibility to withdraw funds if it is necessary to comply with new sanctions. Managing partner of GMT Legal Andrey Tugarin recommended that Russians withdraw funds from centralized platforms licensed in the EU.

On October 8, the Finnish crypto exchange, LocalBitcoins, stopped serving Russian users. An exception was made only for people with dual citizenship of the European Economic Area and Switzerland. Clients will be able to withdraw funds in one transaction, after which access to their wallets will be closed.

For how crypto exchanges react to sanctions against the Russian Federation and where users can withdraw their assets, read GetBlock Magazine’s article.