Why OFAC screening matters in crypto and how Forta Firewall helps

As stablecoins, RWAs, and tokenized assets continue to scale on-chain, the demand for real-time compliance infrastructure is no longer optional. It’s fundamental.

Forta Firewall plays a key role in this layer providing the ability to screen every transaction before execution, including checks against sanctions lists such as the OFAC SDN list.

This type of screening is critical for any chain or asset issuer that wants to support regulated assets or institutional participation.

What is the OFAC List?

The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), part of the U.S. Treasury Department, maintains a list of Specially Designated Nationals (SDNs). This list includes individuals, entities, and wallets associated with activities such as terrorism, cybercrime, drug trafficking, and sanctions violations.

Engaging in transactions with OFAC-listed addresses — whether directly or indirectly — can result in serious legal exposure. This is especially true for institutions or infrastructure providers operating within or alongside regulated environments.

In the context of crypto, this means:

• Transactions involving OFAC-listed wallets can trigger regulatory risk. 
• Protocols or chains processing such transactions may face scrutiny. 
• Ecosystem participants could be affected by the reputational fallout.

Why Screening Matters for Chains

As L2 rollups and appchains take on a more active role in hosting financial activity, they inherit a growing responsibility: to ensure that the infrastructure they operate is not facilitating activity that contravenes sanctions regimes.

Most blockchains are designed to be permissionless. However, protocols and validators increasingly need tools to identify high-risk activity in real time. The ability to screen transactions before inclusion provides a way to reduce regulatory exposure without redesigning the underlying architecture.

This becomes particularly important for chains looking to attract:

• Stablecoin issuers
• RWA platforms
• Financial institutions
• Regulated DeFi applications

These actors often have mandates or legal obligations to avoid exposure to sanctioned parties. Several chains have already taken this step. Rollups like Plume, Ink, and Celo are actively using Forta Firewall to implement transaction screening as part of their core infrastructure.

Institutional Adoption Requires Compliance Foundations

Global institutions are already engaging with blockchain infrastructure, either directly or through service providers. But for this adoption to scale publicly, they must be able to demonstrate the same level of compliance on-chain as they do off-chain.

This includes:

• Screening for sanctioned entities
• Logging risk-relevant activity
• Demonstrating proactive controls to regulators and partners

Without these capabilities, public blockchain infrastructure will struggle to support tokenized assets, permissioned stablecoins, and other institutional-grade assets.

The Role of Forta Firewall

Forta Firewall enables chains to implement real-time transaction screening across multiple risk dimensions, including OFAC SDN addresses. It currently screens more than 4 million transactions per day, helping secure rollups across diverse use cases. With latency under 5 milliseconds, it allows:

• Pre-execution screening of every transaction
• Flexible response actions (flag, log, block, alert) based on risk policy
• Transparent and auditable risk decisions
• Integration into existing rollup tech stacks

Forta Firewall is fully customizable, allowing chains to define their own screening criteria and enforcement logic.

Whether the goal is regulatory compliance, reputational protection, or internal risk management, Firewall provides the tooling required to operate responsibly at scale.

Compliance as Infrastructure

The financial system is increasingly moving to blockchain rails and Compliance Screening is quickly becoming a core layer of secure blockchain infrastructure.

This shift doesn’t slow down innovation. It enables it to grow securely and credibly.

By embedding real-time compliance capabilities at the infrastructure level, Forta Firewall helps ensure that the next phase of crypto’s evolution is not just faster and more efficient. It also aligns with the legal and operational realities of global finance.

‍Book a demo to explore how real-time screening can protect your chain.