Orca DEX Blocks Access to US Users
- Orca, a Solana-based decentralized exchange, has announced that it will block access to its trading interface for all US users on March 31st.
- The DEX witnessed over $634 million worth of trading volume in February and has over $46 million in total value locked in Solana smart contracts.
- However, US users can directly interact with Orca’s smart contract or SDK and can also provide liquidity through orca.so.
- Orca is one of the decentralized exchanges used by Jupiter, a DEX aggregator, and US users can access the DEX via Jupiter.
The regulatory uncertainty in the United States has prevented crypto firms from operating without friction, and as a result, many crypto exchanges have either left the country or gotten into trouble with the regulators. Due to these uncertain and unclear policies, the popular Solana-based decentralized crypto exchange Orca has announced that it will block access to users in the US, and as a result, they will not be able to interact with the platform’s trading interface.
According to a notice posted on the website of the Orca decentralized exchange (DEX) on March 16, users of the platform in the US region will be blocked from trading with the help of its web-based trading interface. This announcement comes at a time when the exchange witnessed over $634 million worth of trading volume in February and as per data from DefiLlama, the DEX has over $46 million in total value locked in Solana smart contracts.
Orca decentralized exchange’s website added a notification on March 16 that stated, “Orca will be adding the United States to the regions and countries that are restricted from trading on orca.so effective March 31, 2023.”
However, it is crucial to note that the change will not have any effect “on the ability of US users to directly interact with Orca’s smart contract or SDK, nor will it impact their ability to provide liquidity through orca.so.” The Americans who directly interact with the DEX’s smart contracts will also remain unaffected by the new stipulations, according to the notice.
Interestingly, Orca is one of the decentralized exchanges used by Jupiter, a popular DEX aggregator on the Solana blockchain, which fulfills orders by showing the best deal with the lowest fees to the traders. It might be possible for US users to use Jupiter to buy and sell indirectly via Orca DEX.
On the other hand, the co-founder of the DEX, which goes by the username @oritheorca on social media platform Twitter, announced that his team is working on something fresh for Orca and also shared a sneak peak for the work in progress via a Twitter post.
“I’ve spent the past several weeks going down a deep rabbit hole, pouring my heart and soul into the design of this product. I’m super proud of the progress so far, and I want to share it with you. So for the next few weeks, I’ll be building in the open alongside you all,” said the co-founder of the Orca DEX.
The American regulatory uncertainty has become a problem for many crypto firms, including Kraken, which was fined around $30 million by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for providing staking services to US citizens without registering these services with the regulator.
Moreover, the Chair of the SEC, Gary Gensler, recently suggested in a statement that stablecoins and Ether (ETH) can be considered securities because they follow the proof-of-stake consensus. Gensler said that people who hold and stake these tokens expect some sort of return, which classifies them as securities. The regulator said that, as per his suggestions, each of the operators of PoS tokens must come to the SEC and seek compliance.
In response to the regulator’s actions, Paul Grewal, the Chief Legal Officer at Coinbase, said that staking is neither a security under the US Securities Act nor under the Howey test.
A crypto journalist with over 3 years of experience in DeFi, NFT, metaverse, etc. Parth has worked with major media outlets in the crypto and finance world and has gained experience and expertise in crypto culture after surviving bear and bull markets over the years.
