What side do you support? This question is being asked by people in the Ukraine-Russia conflict. Some in crypto may find this difficult because, if a project or individual stands against Russia, that also implies it is subject to sanctions. This can be tough to square with crypto/blockchain’s supposed decentralized system and its claims on being borderless, censorship-free and distributed.

Take OpenSea, the NFT marketplace, which really isn’t a decentralized project but is often described as such. “OpenSea is a decentralized peer-to-peer marketplace for buying, selling and trading rare digital goods,” according to CoinMarketCap, for instance.