What side are you on, and why? This question is being asked by people in the Ukraine-Russia conflict. This can prove to be problematic for some members of the crypto community. If an individual or project supports the West against Russia it means that it adheres 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.