OFAC screening for airdrops

Why airdrop claims should screen recipient wallets before tokens are distributed.

TL;DR

TL;DR: Airdropping tokens to a blocked wallet is a violation of OFAC, even with no intent. Screen each claim address against the SDN List before distributing the tokens.

An airdrop is still a transfer of value

An airdrop sends tokens to thousands of addresses at once, but each one is a transfer of value under OFAC (the Office of Foreign Assets Control). Sending to a wallet on the SDN List is a violation with strict liability: intent is not required, and civil penalties start at $356,000 per violation. Volume does not dilute that.

Screening at the claim step

The natural checkpoint is the claim, where a wallet proves eligibility and receives the tokens. Screening there means every address is checked before value moves. The 50 Percent Rule extends blocks to entities 50 percent or more owned by a blocked person, so for airdrops to teams or funds, resolving the entity behind the wallet matters as much as the address match.

Doing it at airdrop scale

agentmail, the screening API at sanctionsai.dev, handles this without slowing the drop: 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. Flagged addresses are excluded from the distribution, and the rest proceed unchanged.