Former OpenSea personnel have faced allegations of involvement in the AnubisDAO rug pull of 2021, though these claims have been met with skepticism from various commentators.
OpenSea, a non-fungible token (NFT) platform, has stated that it has no knowledge of any evidence linking a former employee to the AnubisDAO rug pull incident in 2021, following recent accusations on social media.
In an October 6th thread on X (formerly known as Twitter), the anonymous account NFT Ethics tagged OpenSea, prompting the platform to respond to allegations that its former head of ventures, Kevin Pawlak, was connected to the pseudonymous identity “0xSisyphus” and had engaged in “various dubious business dealings.”
Both NFT Ethics and the blockchain analytics account Lookonchain claimed that 0xSisyphus, and consequently Pawlak, played a significant role in promoting the AnubisDAO project to investors just before the project transferred the newly raised funds to external wallets.
The NFT Ethics thread suggested that Pawlak’s alleged involvement in the AnubisDAO rug pull was premeditated with other developers, and the proceeds were laundered through the meme coin Pepe (PEPE).
However, an OpenSea spokesperson told Cointelegraph that they had no knowledge of Pawlak’s involvement in such activities and emphasized that Pawlak had a “limited scope” during his time at OpenSea.
“Kevin is a former employee who left the company in June 2023. He had a limited scope while at OpenSea — where he worked in a non-management position. We have no awareness of his involvement with the projects in question,” the company representative stated.
“Furthermore, we have no connection to, or information about, the projects in question, as they took place before his time at OpenSea,” the representative added.
In October 2021, AnubisDAO raised 13,556 Ether (ETH) — valued at $60 million at the time — from crypto investors. However, about 20 hours later, the funds were sent to several different wallet addresses, resulting in a significant loss for the investors.
Blockchain investigator ZachXBT expressed skepticism about the accusations, describing the thread as “one of the most mid-curve” things he’d read. He pointed out that the thread relied on numerous assumptions about 0xSisyphus’ role in the alleged rug pull, often without concrete evidence.
Additionally, 0xSisyphus had previously offered a 1,000 ETH reward to anyone who could identify the wallet address responsible for draining the pool and had engaged law enforcement in the United States and Hong Kong, further casting doubt on the new allegations.
ZachXBT acknowledged negligence on 0xSisyphus’s part but emphasized that it differed from stealing money from one’s own project. He also noted that the primary actors responsible for the loss of funds during the AnubisDAO scandal were pseudonymous users known as “Beerus” and “Ersan.”
