OpenSea Denies Airdrop-Related Talk of Enforced Customer Identification

Non-fungible token (NFT) platform OpenSea denied reports that users claiming a potential airdrop will be forced to complete detailed identification, or know-your-customer (KYC), checks.

“This is all completely false,” OpenSea CEO Devin Finzer wrote on X in response to a post that referred to the terms and conditions on the OpenSea Foundation website.

The terms and conditions also said users would be restricted from using VPNs and users in the U.S. would not be able to claim. The page contained “boilerplate language” and was “on a test website for a short period of time,” Finzer said.

Speculation over an OpenSea airdrop has been swirling since December after it registered an entity named OpenSea Foundation in the Cayman Islands, coinciding with the release of a new version of the platform dubbed “OS2.”

X user Adam Hollander said that he had a conversation with the OpenSea chief and “folks in the USA will be happy with the Foundation’s actual announcement when they make it,” seemingly confirming an airdrop will take place.

Polymarket odds weighing whether OpenSea would issue an airdrop before April spiked from 25% to 45% following Finzer’s tweets.

Trading volume on OpenSea has experienced a significant drop since the previous bull run in 2022, when it notched a record $2.7 billion of volume in a single day. Volume for all of January this year was just $194 million, according to Dune.