Head of Product at Opensea accused of ‘insider trading’
A Twitter user named @ZuwuTV accuses the head of product of Opensea, better known as Nate Chastain, of what users on Twitter call "insider trading"
According to @ZuwuTV's findings, Nate had created several secret wallets used to buy up NFTs before they appeared on the front page
Opensea has responded to the accusations with a statement
A Twitter user named @ZuwuTV accuses the head of product of Opensea, better known as Nate Chastain, of what users on Twitter call “insider trading”. According to the accusations Nate Chastain was buying items before they appeared on the front page of Opensea to then sell them for a profit at the moment the front page was updated.
A user on Twitter found out about the suspicious transactions
According to @ZuwuTV’s findings, Nate had created several secret wallets used to buy up NFTs before they appeared on the front page. Zuwu claims that after Nate bought these items the front page of OpenSea was updated to display them pointing to screenshots of the Wayback Machine. Nate then sold the items to his customers at a profit when Opensea displayed the art on the front page. The user claims that these transactions were made by Nate Chastain, as he left traces when he returned the profit from these sales back to his original wallet.
Later, Zuwu shared a document that contained many screenshots of transactions made from wallets allegedly belonging to Opensea’s head of product. According to Zuwu, Not all of the information in this document is confirmed. He states that the yellow-colored wallets are believed to be Nates, the red are supposed to be attached to Nate, and the white are unconfirmed wallets that deserve further investigation.
Opensea is conducting a thorough review of the accusations
Opensea has responded to the accusations with a statement saying: “Yesterday we learned that one of our employees purchased items that they knew were set to display on our front page before they appeared there publicly.” The company explained that they find this behavior disappointing and hopes that users understand that this behavior does not represent OpenSea as a whole. According to the company they have now also implemented new policies stating that team members are not allowed to buy or sell from collections or creators while they are being featured on the home page and employees are prohibited from using confidential information to purchase or sell any NFTs.
Some users on Twitter also point out that this is not the first time Nate has been accused of front-running customers. On August 3 this year, one user pointed out that he had jumped on something before everyone else. Nate responded to this tweet with, “I just wanted to secure one of these before they all disappeared, tbh.”
Blockchain technology makes research like this possible
While the event could be seen as bad press for the NFT industry, there is also an argument that the only reason Zuwu discovered these transactions was because of the transparency of the blockchain. A large group of NFT collectors and artists also came together in a Twitter space of @DeezeFi to discuss the matter. Many realized that this discussion was only possible because of the technology behind these NFTs. In traditional finance, transactions like this would not have been public, and it would have been much harder to find out that Nate his wallet was connected to these transactions.
Many users are also hoping that if the allegations are true, Opensea will try to change its front page to ensure that employees can not curate or know which items are being displayed to take advantage of that knowledge.