The UK customers of Marinade Finance, the largest decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol on Solana, are unable to access the site because of “compliance concerns” with Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) laws.Although it says that “users may withdraw liquidity, claim delayed tickets, or delay unstake via our SDK,” the landing page for users in the United Kingdom has a warning message.
With $248 million divided between native and liquid staking products, Marinade is primarily responsible for the total value locked (TVL) on the Solana blockchain.As of right now, DefiLlama estimates that the total value of assets on the Solana blockchain is $350.000.As of right now, native staking was introduced earlier this year, and Marinade offers yearly payouts of 8.15% for native staking and 7.7% for liquid holdings.
The biggest decentralised exchange in Solana, Orca Finance, has introduced geo-blocking for users in the UK.Restrictions on users in the United Kingdom seem to be a reaction to the FCA’s new promotions guidelines, which limit the promotion of goods and services associated to cryptocurrencies.Following the publication of the FCA’s promotional regulation, centralized cryptocurrency companies such as Bybit and Paypal have exited the UK market, while Binance has temporarily suspended new sign-ups from the UK.Some clients were also prohibited from investing in cryptocurrency by Luno.
However, for decentralized protocols the majority of which do not call for know-your-customer (KYC) checks geo-restrictions are uncommon.