Which Blockchains Does OFAC Sanctions Screening Cover?

When teams evaluate a sanctions screening tool, one of the first questions is: which chains does it actually cover? It's the right question — but for OFAC screening specifically, the answer starts with a different party: the US Treasury. Since 2018, OFAC has attached digital-currency addresses to entries on its Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) list, and each address is tagged with the asset it belongs to. Coverage, done properly, means ingesting every one of those identifiers — whatever network they're on. This post walks through the networks that appear in the SDN data today, and how CompliAPI keeps up as that set grows.

The networks in OFAC's SDN data

OFAC labels each listed address with an asset tag — Digital Currency Address - XBT for Bitcoin, - ETH for Ethereum, and so on. (Yes, Treasury uses the older XBT ticker for Bitcoin.) CompliAPI parses every one of these identifiers out of the official SDN publication. The networks and assets that appear in the data fall into a few groups:

Base-layer networks. The designations that make headlines are mostly here:

Tag	Network
XBT	Bitcoin
ETH	Ethereum
LTC	Litecoin
BCH	Bitcoin Cash
BSV	Bitcoin SV
BTG	Bitcoin Gold
ETC	Ethereum Classic
XRP	Ripple
TRX	Tron
XVG	Verge

Privacy coins. Sanctioned actors gravitate toward chains built to obscure flows, and OFAC lists addresses on them anyway: Monero (XMR), Zcash (ZEC) and Dash.

Stablecoins. Designations increasingly include token addresses, not just native-coin addresses — Tether (USDT) and USD Coin (USDC) both appear in SDN entries.

EVM sidechains and L2s. More recent designations extend to addresses tagged for Arbitrum (ARB) and Binance Smart Chain (BSC).

Coverage that follows the list, not a fixed menu

The set above isn't a product decision — it's a snapshot of what Treasury has published. That distinction matters for how a screening pipeline should be built. CompliAPI's ingestion doesn't check addresses against a hard-coded list of supported chains: it extracts every digital-currency identifier in the SDN data, known tag or not. When OFAC starts listing addresses on a network it has never used before, those addresses flow into the screening dataset on the next ingestion cycle — no product update required.

That cycle runs automatically every 15 minutes against the official OFAC publication. Additions appear, and just as importantly, delistings are tracked: entities removed from the SDN list stop matching immediately, while the historical record is retained for audit purposes. Screening always runs against the current list, not a stale copy.

One address, one answer, one official source

Checking an address is a single call:

GET /api/v1/screen/crypto/{address}

The response tells you whether the address appears in the current SDN data, and every match carries a source_url pointing at the official OFAC record — so your compliance team reviews the Treasury entry itself, not a paraphrase:

{
  "address": "0x...",
  "match": "exact",
  "sanctioned": true,
  "source_url": "https://sanctionssearch.ofac.treas.gov/Details.aspx?id=27307"
}

The endpoint also accepts ENS names: pass vitalik.eth and CompliAPI resolves it on Ethereum mainnet before screening, so a human-readable label can't stand in front of a listed address. Every request is logged to your organization's audit trail, and the same check is available to AI agents through our MCP server.

What multi-chain screening is — and isn't

The OFAC check described here is a direct lookup against officially listed identifiers across every network OFAC publishes. That is deliberately narrower than blockchain analytics: it answers a precise, auditable question — does this identifier appear in the current OFAC SDN data? — with the official source attached. CompliAPI's multi-list screening also carries clearly-labeled direct-interaction risk lists alongside the sanctions data, but it does not cluster wallets or score multi-hop indirect exposure. Many teams pair these direct controls with analytics or KYC tooling where their risk profile requires it; the tools answer different questions.

CompliAPI provides data and tools that support compliance workflows. It does not provide legal advice, and organizations should determine their obligations with qualified counsel.

Final thoughts

The list of blockchains in OFAC's data has grown steadily — from the first Bitcoin addresses in 2018 to privacy coins, stablecoins and L2 networks today — and there's no reason to expect it to stop. Building on a screening pipeline that follows the official list means your coverage grows with it. Get a free API key and screen your first address in minutes, or see the wallet screening API for how it fits into onboarding, deposit and payout flows.