OpenSea’s head of product Nate Chastain, who was recently charged with a form of NFT insider trading, appears to no longer work 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 requested and received his resignation.
Yesterday, Finzer published a blog post saying that an employee used knowledge gained from working at the company to buy NFTs that were about to be posted on the homepage of the popular trading site (and thus likely to rise of value). While there is apparently still an ongoing investigation, OpenSea says it has implemented clearer rules to prevent employees from doing this type of thing in the future.
The incident came to light after the NFT community began investigating transactions on Chastain’s public wallet. Community members, taking advantage of the openness and semi-transparency of the blockchain, were able to find transactions that seemed to indicate that he was secretly trading NFTs. Community members also say the transactions show this investment earned the employee thousands of dollars or more; you can read more about the investigations and allegations here.
Chastain has yet to make a public statement or acknowledge the situation in any way. However, his Twitter profile and the OpenSea blog post seem to indicate that his time with the company is over.
