There was a user not to be named, who had an issue with the forum owner, and a few of the members, a few years ago. He used a VPN to connect from multiple exit nodes and harass the forum with majorly inappropriate images and posts, which would have gotten Dave into some serious legal costs, so the entire VPN network he used was permablocked, and he was banned, along with his entire location IP block.
Thankfully he was the only user from that area, and has not tried again, though I suspect there were a few members in his country who called him in as well, to the right authorities. No, not likely that Gnif will enable VPN exit nodes again, except for a few select and non disclosed ones, you will have to ask the Moderators for this to be done, but, as an open forum, a VPN is not often needed to access it, except for a few special case uses.