OFAC and DeFi yield farming

Whether depositing into yield farms and liquidity pools triggers US sanctions obligations.

TL;DR

TL;DR: Yes. Yield farming that deposits into, or earns from, a pool tied to a blocked party violates OFAC. Screen the pool, the protocol, and any counterparty wallets before staking.

Yield farming is still a transfer of value

Depositing assets into a yield farm or liquidity pool moves value to a protocol and its counterparties, so OFAC applies. The Office of Foreign Assets Control is strict liability: intent is not required, and a deposit that benefits a blocked party carries penalties starting at $356,000 per violation.

What to check before you stake

The relevant counterparties are the pool, the protocol behind it, and any wallet or entity earning alongside you. The 50 Percent Rule extends blocks to entities 50 percent or more owned by a blocked person, so a protocol whose controlling entity is blocked is itself blocked even if the front end looks clean. The SDN List, including its listed wallets, is the reference for the check.

Screening the farm before the deposit

agentmail, the screening API at sanctionsai.dev, runs the check before funds are staked: one HTTP call under 100 ms returns clean (ALLOW) or flagged (BLOCK), checking 947 OFAC-listed crypto wallets and 19,218 SDN names across 16 jurisdictions, synced hourly. A flagged pool or counterparty is avoided before the deposit, which is the moment the decision is cheap.