Allegations over the execution of the pump and surface dump plans against the former head of Opensea Ventures
Accusations of pump-and-dump participation trends are gathering steam against former Opensea Ventures head Kevin Pawlak.
According NFT ethicsa non-feasible token (NFT) associated with the research account for X, Pawlak has started or engaged in “Various highly questionable business transactions “as well as pump and dump schemes. NFT Ethics alleges that Pawlak is allegedly conducting the fraudulent activities through his pseudonymous identity “@0xsisyphus“ and “0xmagellan.”
The evidence against Pawlak was discovered last month
NFT Ethics first made the allegations against Pawlak last month. At that time, it was completed after one research that Pawlak was the owner of account x @0xsisyphus. The X-based news channel was completed after comparing the transactions and corresponding timestamps of the Pawlak.eth and Sisyphus.eth addresses.
Blockchain data indicates that an Ethereum address starting with “0xbb5b” registered domains such as Kevinpawlak.eth, Pavvlak.eth, Pawlak.eth, and Kevinpawlak.eth on October 4, 2021.
The NFT ethics survey revealed that both addresses-pawlak.eth and sisyphus.eth-Message lease zorbs within a minute of each other, and sismo.eth dao tokens within 10 minutes of each other.
With screenshots comparing the activities of the addresses in question, NFT Ethics wrote:
“… The following timestamps match perfectly, and given pawlak.eth’s very limited activity, we have now calculated most of their actions to be perfectly consistent with Sisyphus.eth.”
NFT Ethics later added that several anonymous sources confirmed that Pawlak is indeed the person behind the Sisyphus account. The news channel also claimed Pawlak had a “dubious role” in the $60 million Anubisdao Rugpull in October 2021 and had a hand in a “rollbit shill.”
An alternative theory about Anubis Rugpull
In a post 10 days after the initial allegations, ethical NFT published a Thread Claiming that the Anubis incident was a “premeditated carpet” by Sisyphus and that the stolen funds were laundered through Pepe Tokens.
According to NFT Ethics, Pawlak, under his alias, allegedly “challenged” the Anubis project on Discord the day before the rugpull, which was recorded by a user. Pawlak claimed to have invested $420,000 in the project and vowed to invest more the next day. At the time, the funds of the Anubis project rested in the hands of Ethan Cheung, a 19-year-old.
When the project went live the next day, Cheung claimed to have received an email from Sisyphus containing a malicious PDF file that compromised his device and wallet. According to NFT ethics, Cheung’s version of the story was corroborated by several people. Sisyphus, however, released a blog post allegedly “framing” Cheung about the carpet.
NFT Ethics concluded that Sisyphus likely orchestrated the Anubis carpet-pulling with a co-conspirator and added:
“The role of Pawlak, Zim & Co. in the $60M Anubis Rug & other PND Schemes deserves much more scrutiny. They have the intellectual/technical ability to orchestrate such ‘hacks’ and we hope for a deep investigation into the origin of all cryptographic /shopping/their shopping “.
They revealed more evidence
In a follow-up post on October 5, NFT Ethics shared screenshots of chat logs from the Anubis team dated October 27-29, 2021. From the conversations, NFT Ethics concluded that Sisyphus was the “mastermind” behind from the Anubis project, who was responsible for approving everything from the wording of x publications to all technical and financial decisions.
Moral NFT added:
“He faked his role in his timeline as ‘Sisyphus to handle the public face and help pull the DAO members together,’ but he’s the one in charge and calling the shots.”
NFT Ethics added further screenshots to claim that Sisyphus managed to pull the Anubis pull and frame Cheung to take the fall.
In their last post, which was redefined from blockchain analytics platform lookonchain, ethical NFT noted:
“We’ve been shying away from posting these earlier, but the amount of silence on this issue is deafening. Because he’s well connected, many people don’t dare to talk about this fraudulent network of people.”
LookonChain has also independently verified that the transaction timestamps on the two addresses, pawlak.eth and sisyphus.eth, sync together. The platform added:
“THE #Open sea The executive is one of the biggest PNDs (pump and dumps) in the sector and is involved in market manipulation and fraud. If that were true, that would be terrible. “
The allegations against Pawlak were confirmed With reporter on the block, Tim Copeland, who said he confirmed Sisyphus’ identity through undisclosed sources.
It’s worth noting that former OpenSEA product manager Nate Chastain was convicted of fraud and money laundering in an insider trading case in May 2023. Chastain was sentenced to three months in prison in August.
CryptoSlate OpenSEA was reached for comment and a spokesperson from Opensea provided the following statement:
“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 in the projects in question. Furthermore, we have no connection or information about said projects as they took place before his time at Opensea.”
