Kevin Pawlak, former business director of nft platform OpenSea, is embroiled in a web of accusations surrounding the infamous AnubisDAO rug-pulling of 2021. However, OpenSea maintains that there is no concrete evidence linking its former employee to the alleged misdeeds. despite recent claims circulating on social media.
TO thread in X It emerged recently, instigated by an anonymous account known as nft Ethics. In this thread, nft Ethics directly tagged OpenSea and demanded a response regarding the allegations involving Kevin Pawlak. These claims suggested that Pawlak was not only related to the pseudonymous identity “0xSisyphus,” but that he was also allegedly involved in “several dubious businesses.”
1/ Dear @Open seaWhat do you make of the fact that your corporate boss, Kevin Pawlak, has been involved in several very dubious businesses (e.g. Anubis) and pump and dump schemes under his pseudonym? @0xSisyphus (& 0xMagallanes)? pic.twitter.com/GzIVLJirLE
– nft Ethics (@NFTethics) October 6, 2023
Is Kevin Pawlak ‘0xSisyphus?’
nft Ethics had initially made these surprising accusations against Pawlak the previous month, following an extensive investigation. At the time, they concluded that Pawlak was the owner of the X account @0xSisyphus. Their findings were based on a comparison of transactions and corresponding timestamps between the pawlak.eth and sisyphus.eth addresses.
1/ A while ago we did a quick investigation to see who @0xSisyphus was and we concluded that it is Kevin Pawlak, the director of OpenSea Ventures. The timestamps on the pawlak.eth and sisyphus.eth addresses match perfectly (see the following tweets). https://t.co/qLRAARmvFa pic.twitter.com/acX1GqsHhV
– nft Ethics (@NFTethics) September 17, 2023
To further bolster its case, nft Ethics delved into blockchain data. Their investigation revealed that an ethereum address beginning with “0xBB5B” had registered domains such as kevinpawlak.eth, pavvlak.eth, pawlak.eth, and kevinpawlak.eth on October 4, 2021. This discovery added a layer of complexity to the allegations. around Pawlak.
Besides, nft ethics revealed that both addresses, pawlak.eth and sisyphus.eth, had participated in the minting of Zorbs tokens within a minute of each other. They also participated in the minting of sismo.eth DAO tokens in a span of just 10 minutes.
Cryptocurrencies total market cap at $1.05 trillion today: TradingView.com
The AnubisDAO Incident
The heart of these allegations stems from the AnubisDAO carpet-mining incident in October 2021. AnubisDAO had successfully raised a staggering 13,556 Ether, equivalent to $60 million at the time, from enthusiastic cryptocurrency investors. However, approximately 20 hours later, these funds were mysteriously transferred to multiple wallet addresses, resulting in immediate losses for unsuspecting investors.
That thread is one of the most middle-of-the-road things I’ve ever read. They make a lot of assumptions about unrelated events without facts.
FixFloat generates tons of volume and the same goes for the other exchanges mentioned. Here is the source address of the April 2023 FixFloat insider PEPE buys I… https://t.co/0kG2M7DNVi
– ZachXBT (@zachxbt) September 29, 2023
In response to these accusations, the blockchain detective ZachXBT expressed skepticism, describing the thread as “one of the most middle-of-the-road” threads he had found. He suggested that many of the assumptions about 0xSisyphus’s role in the alleged rug-pulling were based on “unrelated events and no facts.”
Doubts persist
To add to the intrigue, 0xSisyphus had previously offered a substantial reward of 1000 eth to anyone able to identify the wallet address responsible for draining the AnubisDAO pool. This act, coupled with the involvement of law enforcement in both the United States and Hong Kong, raises questions about the validity of the recent accusations against Pawlak.
As OpenSea distances itself from these claims, the crypto community continues to grapple with the mysterious web of accusations, unsure of the true identity behind 0xSisyphus and the events surrounding the AnubisDAO rug pull.
Featured image from Paxful
