In the past few years, OpenSea has become the dominant marketplace of exchange for NFTs. According to DappRadar's NFT Marketplace statistics, OpenSea is by far the most traded-on marketplace by volume and number of traders (excluding LooksRare, which has incentivized trading which results in massive wash trading by whales), with a daily volume of $177.84M, versus the next-in-line Magic Eden with only $6.24M in daily volume. When OpenSea decides to censor an NFT from its marketplace, what happens is that a large chunk of the NFT market no longer sees the censored NFT. The question that we need to ask is if NFTs can be censored, and if censorship is needed in the world of NFTs today.

Can NFTs be censored?

No, in the sense that the NFT will live forever on the blockchain. However, as we all know, NFTs are often just text metadata that contains image links. Most people view images of their NFTs on a platform like OpenSea or Rarible.

Some NFTs in the Azuki collection on OpenSea

If OpenSea decides to delist an NFT, 90% of normal people will no longer be able to see it on the marketplace or in their wallets, effectively censoring them from the greater audience. Even though users of OpenSea will no longer be able to see those delisted NFTs, they can still be viewed on other platforms, and are still in the owners' wallets. Should this be considered censorship?

A sale of a Phunk, which are just flipped versions of the original CryptoPunks

OpenSea states in their Help Center that they will delist items or collections that violate their Terms of Service, which has happened multiple times as people try to test the limits of what OpenSea will accept on their marketplace. We have flipped CryptoPunks being delisted, stolen Apes being delisted, an NFT collection created by a rather-hated political artist being delisted amongst others. In many cases, the delisting of an NFT is followed by a steep drop in their values as most people equate viewing their NFTs on OpenSea to be the ground truth for what NFTs they have in their wallets.

While NFTs cannot be fully censored in the sense that they are completely gone from the blockchain, it is quite apparent that if the NFT is censored on OpenSea, it is also gone from the eyes of many.

Is there a need for NFT censorship?

A notice from OpenSea if you try to view a de-listed NFT

Censorship is often used in part to protect the public's eyes from things that may not be suitable for most people's consumption, or things that are downright unethical. Things like gore, child pornography, murder - these are all things that most people would agree need to be censored in some fashion.

OpenSea goes further than that to censor NFTs which may infringe on copyright laws, contain "politically incorrect" things, or possibly incite hate towards a community. These are a little more contentious as to whether they need to be censored. It's true that some people may take offense when they see a Confederate Flag or a Swastika, but others don't. Why should OpenSea be the arbiter of what is considered acceptable?

With the rise of cancel culture, controversial artists are increasingly getting de-platformed as a knee-jerk response. It is said that giving these artists a platform to showcase their work (even if they aren't of a controversial nature) is akin to supporting whatever politically incorrect things they may be saying. In essence, many people don't care if a horrible person makes good art - they still want it de-platformed.

I think the crux of the issue lies here - while we want OpenSea and other platforms to shield our eyes from outright illegal or unethical NFTs, we also don't want a world where OpenSea becomes God in the realm of NFTs. However, because there's no way to tell that an NFT is illegal or unethical without human intervention, this also means that by allowing a platform to censor things that 99% of people would want to be censored, we also have to allow it to censor other controversial things that they find unsuitable for the platform. An NFT marketplace can either have zero censorship or one that becomes subjective in how it censors items - there's no in-between.

What do you think?

Censorship is no new concept to most of us. As the NFT landscape grows, I think that it is important that censorship is discussed and not just thrown aside, especially since most NFTs are considered art in some form. You may not agree that NFTs are ecologically friendly or can be even considered art at all, but let's just assume that these potential problems with the core concept of NFTs are non-issues for the sake of discussion.

Should NFTs be censored? And if so, who should be the judge of how NFTs should be censored?

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