Outrage as Tech Platform Blocks Nigerian Residents from its Faucet, Co-Founder Explains Why
- A tech platform, Celestia Labs, has announced the blocking of Nigerian residents from its faucet feature over a discovery they made
- Sharing the development on X, the platform's co-founder, Mustafa Al-Bassam, tendered an apology as he explained why the decision was taken
- Mixed reactions trailed the tech platform's decision, with many criticising it for using the supposed inaction of a few to judge a country of over 200 million people
Celestia Labs, a tech platform, has blocked Nigerian residents from its faucet feature.
Mustafa Al-Bassam, a co-founder of the platform, broke the news on X on July 7, as he apologised for the decision.
Source: Twitter
Why tech platform blocked Nigerian residents
According to Mustafa, Celestia Labs had to block Nigerian residents from its faucet because the majority of them withdrew the $5 (N6,876.50) that was originally intended for testing the product.
"I apologise, we had to block Nigerian residents from the faucet because most of them were withdrawing the $5 that was meant to be for testing the product," Mustafa's tweet read.
He attached a chart depicting the country-by-country breakdown of "TIA bridged out", which is the amount of TIA tokens (the native cryptocurrency of the Celestia blockchain) that have been bridged out to other blockchain networks, grouped by users' countries.
The most striking takeaway is that Nigeria dominates the list, with 9,189 compared to just 638 for the second-ranked country (the UK). That means Nigeria accounts for the overwhelming majority of the activity represented in this chart.
Source: Twitter
See the tech platform's co-founder's tweet below:
Tech platform's decision elicits reactions
Legit.ng has compiled some reactions to the tech platform's decision below:
@Edikan59948852 said:
"Does this apology mean you're reinstating them? Please, next time single out those individuals and mete out your punishment. Stop letting a few represent the whole."
@Runtime_Ricky said:
"No wonder cus I've been trying to open the page for ages and or still isn't working....so what are the genuine users gonna do now."
@savixbt said:
"Wait, so you mean 9,189 people withdrew $5?
"Tech is good."
@algo_reedim said:
"Come on now.
"We are 200m+ people, you cannot be judging us based on what just 9k people did? Let more come in! By the way, spot our colonizers at number 2. I guess the apple never falls far away from the tree. Well well, they may even be Nigerians living in the UK."
@BigBaby156505 said:
"So you put money there for sign up bonus but get mad when people actually withdraw the money after signing up."
@youusayywhat said:
"Abuse of power smh You didn’t say we shouldn’t withdraw Can you increase the $5 to $20 and unblock Nigeria we won’t withdraw again."
@CitySkyBluees said:
"This is a bad look for Nigeria. The funny thing is that it can be just one person or a group of people who withdrew those funds on multiple occasions."
In a related story, Legit.ng reported that Nigeria was affected as Cape Verde halted visa-on-arrival for 96 countries.
TikTok bans late-night LIVE in Nigeria
Meanwhile, Legit.ng had previously reported that TikTok had temporarily restricted its LIVE feature in Nigeria during late-night hours.
At its West Africa Safety Summit in Dakar, Senegal, the company reported that in the second quarter of 2025, it acted against more than 2.3 million LIVE sessions and over 1 million LIVE creators globally for violating its LIVE monetisation rules.
In Nigeria alone, 49,512 LIVE sessions were banned within the same period. TikTok also disclosed that between April and June 2025, it removed over 3.7 million videos posted in Nigeria for Community Guidelines violations.
Source: Legit.ng
