Opensea finally succumbs to the pressure of banning employees who were profiting off insider information. A high-level executive was accused of profiting off artworks quickly after they were promoted on the website’s front page.
In the report, they said that they are going to take the necessary measures to ensure that team members cannot use confidential information to profit from trades. They will also make certain that they cannot buy or sell from the featured collection.
“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,” said Devin Finzer, the co-founder and chief executive of the site.
“This is incredibly disappointing. We want to be clear that this behaviour does not represent our values as a team. We are taking this very seriously and are conducting an immediate and thorough third-party review of this incident so that we have a full understanding of the facts and additional steps we need to take.”
Blockchain framework takes center stage
This came to light after it was meticulously traced on the blockchain platform where everyone can view all the transactions. Traders noticed that an anonymous user was “strategically” purchasing items from the public marketplace shortly before they were promoted on the site’s front page.
To make it even more obvious, the anonymous user would then sell the assets. This allowed the user to rake in huge sums within a short period of time, often time within hours.
This whole cheeky operation was linked to Nate Chastain, OpenSea’s head of product.
Overall, this is an interesting piece of insight and kudos to those who noticed it. It goes to show how we can use the blockchain to connect the dots and solve financial schemes. This might be a drop in the bucket to what is probably going on behind the scenes of these NFT companies.
As regulators start to sniff their noses in the honey pot. Incidents like these will give them further validation as to why the whole market needs to be regulated.
