Stablecoin Blacklisting — Research Dataset and Dashboard

A reproducible, cited dataset of every freeze (BLACKLIST) and unfreeze (UNBLACKLIST) action that stablecoin issuers have executed on user balances, traced from the on-chain transaction to the public legal or regulatory event behind it. Initial coverage is Circle's USDC across six EVM chains, 2020-06 to 2026-04; the schema is issuer-agnostic and is being extended to Tether's USDT.

The animating question is whether issuers' stated policies — typically "we freeze only on a binding legal request" — match their actual on-chain behavior, and whether enforcement correlates with a counterparty's commercial relationship to the issuer.

Dashboard

The interactive dashboard is published at:

https://michaeljunholee.github.io/blackstable/dashboard/

It includes a brushable bubble timeline, multi-select reason filters, per-cluster detail cards, and right-rail breakdowns by reason mix, largest events, and year.

Dataset at a glance

Table	Rows	Notes
actions.csv	2,922	One row per on-chain BL/UB event
implementations.csv	2,922	1:1 with actions; carries tx_hash, block, chain, function called
entities.csv	60	Sanctioned parties, organizations, individuals
triggers.csv	55	Legal/regulatory causes
incidents.csv	5	Real-world events (hacks, sanctions waves)
sources.csv	40	Primary and secondary sources, archived
action_sources.csv	2,469	Audit trail linking actions to sources
policies.csv	20	Circle privacy-policy versions over time

Date range: 2020-06-16 → 2026-04-15. Chains: Ethereum, Base, Polygon, Avalanche, Arbitrum, Optimism. Attribution coverage to a public trigger is roughly 85% of BL events and 84% of UB events.

Methodology and limitations

• docs/schema.md — field-by-field data dictionary
• docs/sourcing-standards.md — how sources are selected, archived, and cited
• docs/relationship-criteria.md — the rubric used to classify entity ↔ issuer relationships
• docs/completeness-map.md — what is exhaustive, what is best-effort, what is out of scope per chain × era
• docs/known-gaps.md — chains, eras, and mechanisms we know are under-covered, and why

The project applies conservative defaults: when evidence is insufficient for HIGH confidence the row is marked LOW; when an entity's relationship to the issuer is not documented it is classified MAYBE rather than assumed.

Reproducibility

# 1. Install
uv pip install -e ".[dev]"        # or: pip install -e ".[dev]"

# 2. Configure API keys
cp .env.example .env              # then set DUNE_API_KEY and ETHERSCAN_API_KEY

# 3. Run the pipeline
python scripts/01_normalize_onchain.py   # fetches on-chain BL/UB events
python scripts/02_archive_policies.py    # snapshots issuer policy pages to the Wayback Machine
python scripts/99_validate.py            # schema and referential-integrity checks

# 4. Build the dashboard
python scripts/03_build_html.py          # emits docs/dashboard/

# 5. Run the test suite
pytest tests/ -q                          # 116 tests

A pre-commit hook at .git-hooks/pre-commit runs the validator on every commit that touches data/*.csv. Activate it once per clone:

git config core.hooksPath .git-hooks

Citation

Lee, M. Stablecoin Blacklisting: A Research Dataset and Dashboard. 2026. Available at: https://michaeljunholee.github.io/blackstable/dashboard/.

If you use the dataset in academic work, please cite the version (commit hash) you used.

License

Released under the MIT License — see LICENSE.

The dataset itself is a record of publicly observable on-chain transactions and publicly cited legal events. Where individual notes flag claims as LOW confidence or MAYBE, treat them as such.

Contributing

Issues and PRs are welcome — particularly:

• Cross-chain validation against the same on-chain queries
• Attribution leads for events currently in the "no public reason" category
• Corrections to specific cited claims (please include a primary source)

There is no formal contributor agreement; the MIT license covers contributions.