OpenSea head of product Nate Chastain, who was recently accused of a form of NFT insider trading, appears to no longer be working for the company. His Twitter bio now includes the phrase “Past: @opensea.” OpenSea has not publicly named the employee involved in the incident, but CEO Devin Finzer says the NFT trading platform asked for and received their resignation.
Yesterday, Finzer put up a blog post saying an employee used knowledge gained from working at the company to purchase NFTs that were about to be posted to the popular trading site’s homepage (and would thus likely go up in value). While an investigation is apparently still ongoing, OpenSea does say that it’s implemented clearer rules to prevent employees from doing this kind of thing in the future.
We have a strong responsibility to our community, and we take any breach of trust incredibly seriously.
We’ve taken additional steps to address this and are investing in policies that move the space towards greater transparency and openness.
Update: https://t.co/NWExSdThOf
— Devin Finzer (dfinzer.eth) (@dfinzer) September 16, 2021
The incident came to light after the NFT community began digging into transactions in Chastain’s public wallet. Community members, taking advantage of the blockchain’s openness and semi-transparency, were able to find transactions that seemed to indicate that he was secretly flipping NFTs. The community members also say that the transactions show that this flipping earned the employee thousands of dollars or more — you can read more about the investigations and accusations here.
Chastain has yet to make a public statement or acknowledge the situation in any way. However, his Twitter profile, and OpenSea’s blog post, would seem to indicate that his time at the company is over.
