Yep, you read that right. This isn’t clickbait or some paid news piece. We’re witnessing a unique event in decentralized finance: the fall of a titan once thought to be untouchable.

After a bit of research and my own experiences on the platform, I’ve come to the conclusion that we’ll soon hear the news: the NFT giant is shutting down. And this closure isn’t just because of the rise of true decentralized finance—where you can trade freely without paying fees—but also because of its anti-humanistic and hypocritical policies.

I get it, you might be skeptical. No blame there. It’s tough to gauge the impact of a service’s policies when the fine print isn’t aimed at you. But let’s dive into the numbers at Dune Analytics...

In the chart above, which conveniently stopped updating 14 days ago, you can see the constant drop in active users over the months at OpenSea Platform

Now, let’s check out the monthly fees they rake in by "intermediating" user sales. Business isn’t booming, and I’ll explain why, considering their anti-human and hypocritical policies.

Blocking Venezuela: A Personal Tale

One of their hypocritical policies is blocking certain countries, including Venezuela, my homeland, using CORS. While many DeFi platforms also block Venezuelans out of ignorance, this blockade is easily bypassed with a VPN and new wallets.

Without VPN 🙄

With VPN 🦧

Is this the hypocrisy I’m talking about? As an NFT buyer, I shelled out hundreds in commissions to OpenSea, only to be banned for something I never should’ve done as a Venezuelan who’s always been blocked 🤷‍♂️

Had they not realized before that a starving Venezuelan like me was sending them money with the fees he paid with each trade he made on the platform for more than two years? 🤔 How many cases like mine are there out there? How many other citizens of “sanctioned” countries use “legally armored” platforms against us, and in turn we put bread on the table for those who censor and block us?

OpenSea's Double Standard

You don’t have to be American to know who loves their country and who’s trying to wreck it. Companies like OpenSea even censor their own citizens, like when they pulled Donald Trump’s NFT collection, impacting his fundraising.

OpenSea preferred to take the noose around its neck by delisting perhaps the most successful collection of NFTs of all time, whose launch was as clean as anyone imagined and raised millions of dollars in a matter of hours. I can't imagine all the sadly ill with TDS running in circles during the peak hours of the collection 😂

Though Trump’s second NFT collection is still listed, the floor prices don’t match the first collection, which now starts at $200 a piece. (Images courtesy of CoinGecko)

The hypocrisy of these big companies with their flexible morals is clear: they forbid you from using their platform, profit from your trade, and if they catch you, they kick you out and keep the commissions.

Oh, so you want to enter, let's see, show me your current passport (dox yourself before me) to give you access to the JPEG trade on our platform.

And yes, they reached that point by being my publicly known person (just by searching my ENS on Google they will have access to my LinkedIn)

Here's the email chat I had with their support bots:

Once I told Bonnie 🤖 that I was not planning to share my passport or any other personal documentation, another 🤖 responded to me, now with the club in the hand

They failed to thank me for the hundreds of dollars they received from my business operations. Let them take advantage! 🤑

Here meditating… 🤔

Isn't it supposed that accepting money from sanctioned countries could be configured as a money laundering crime? I wouldn't want to get too legal, but I would really like to read the opinion of an American legal expert who can enlighten us and tell us how companies like this can enter capital of "dubious origin" into the American financial system without having any type of administrative-criminal sanction. .

Final Thoughts

As an active participant in decentralized finance for over five years, I’ll keep fighting for the little guy—you and me—who grow stronger through collective intelligence and open-source code.

As an oppressed Venezuelan, I promise this: if we ever regain our freedom, I’ll be one of the first to denounce this geographic segregation.

To all of you, patient readers, thank you for reading. OpenSea, rest in peace ✝. Your own policies led you to exile. Nobody will miss you.