Starting March 31, the DEX operating on Solana—Orca will prevent users located in the US from conducting trades on its web platform. The plan was revealed in an official announcement published on its website.
On-chain platform DefiLlama disclosed that the exchange currently holds a total value of over $46 million locked in smart contracts of Solana and generated more than $634 million in exchange volume for February.
Exploring A Viable Alternative
However, the notice highlighted that this alteration would not affect the capacity of Orca’s US users to interact directly with SDK or the smart contract of Orca. According to the notice, individuals from the United States who engage directly with the smart contract of Orcas will not encounter any issues due to this modification.
Meanwhile, traders who intend to interact with the smart contract of Orca may explore Jupiter’s website as a viable alternative. To avoid scrutiny from American regulators, centralized cryptocurrency exchanges without authorization in the United States have frequently blocked U.S. users.
However, most DEXs have yet to follow this trend except for some. For instance, Aggregator 1inch announced that it would block American users based on its terms of use and followed suit in Sep. 2021.
Similarly, by June 2019, Binance — a decentralized exchange, prohibited users from the U.S. It is worth mentioning that decentralized exchanges do not have a centralized database or “back end” managed by developers, in contrast to centralized exchanges.
Bypassing Geographic Restrictions
Nevertheless, some users bypass these geographic restrictions by directly connecting to blockchain technology through development tools like Hardhat or Truffle or using a Virtual Private Network (VPN) to conceal their computer’s IP address.
Recently, such restrictions affected the Bitzlato exchange founder, who faced allegations of money laundering in the US. However, he has denied charges brought against him. Anatoly Legkodymov—Bitzlato’s owner, refuted any blame in the investigation.
Nevertheless, Legkodymov was detained in Miami in mid-January for his involvement in managing the exchange platform. According to the charges brought against him by US regulators, he purportedly handled more than $700 million of unlawful funds.
