NFT Tycoon Tied To $60 Million AnubisDAO Rug Pull

On Oct 9, 2023

Kevin Pawlak, the former head of ventures at the NFT platform OpenSea, finds himself entangled in a web of accusations surrounding the infamous AnubisDAO rug pull of 2021. However, OpenSea maintains that there is no concrete evidence linking their former employee to the alleged misdeeds, despite recent claims circulating on social media.

A thread on X recently surfaced, instigated by an anonymous account known as NFT Ethics. In this thread, NFT Ethics directly tagged OpenSea and demanded a response regarding allegations implicating Kevin Pawlak. These claims suggested that Pawlak was not only connected to the pseudonymous identity “0xSisyphus” but also allegedly involved in “various dubious business dealings.”

1/ Dear @OpenSea, what do you think of the fact that your Head of Ventures, Kevin Pawlak, has been involved in various very dubious business dealings (e.g. Anubis) and pump & dump schemes under his pseudonymous identity @0xSisyphus (& 0xMagellan)? pic.twitter.com/GzIVLJirLE
— NFT Ethics (@NFTethics) October 6, 2023

Is Kevin Pawlak ‘0xSisyphus?’

NFT Ethics had initially made these startling allegations against Pawlak the month prior, 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 pawlak.eth and sisyphus.eth addresses.

1/ A while back we did a quick investigation to see who @0xSisyphus was and we came to the conclusion that it’s Kevin Pawlak, the head of OpenSea Ventures. The timestamps on the pawlak.eth and sisyphus.eth addresses perfectly match (see next tweets). https://t.co/qLRAARmvFa pic.twitter.com/acX1GqsHhV
— NFT Ethics (@NFTethics) September 17, 2023

To further bolster their case, NFT Ethics delved into blockchain data. Their investigation revealed that an Ethereum address commencing with “0xBB5B” had registered domains like kevinpawlak.eth, pavvlak.eth, pawlak.eth, and kevinpawlak.eth on Oct. 4, 2021. This discovery added a layer of complexity to the allegations surrounding Pawlak.

Moreover, NFT Ethics disclosed that both addresses, pawlak.eth and sisyphus.eth, had participated in the minting of Zorbs tokens within a minute of each other. They had also engaged in the minting of sismo.eth DAO tokens within 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 rug pull incident of October 2021. AnubisDAO had successfully raised a staggering 13,556 Ether, equivalent to $60 million at the time, from eager crypto investors. However, approximately 20 hours later, these funds were mysteriously transferred to various wallet addresses, resulting in immediate losses for the unsuspecting investors.

That thread is one of the most midcurve things I have read. They make many assumptions off unrelated events without facts.
FixedFloat does tons in volume and same with the other exchanges mentioned. Here is the source address of the April 2023 FixedFloat insider PEPE buys I… https://t.co/0kG2M7DNVi
— ZachXBT (@zachxbt) September 29, 2023

In response to these accusations, blockchain sleuth ZachXBT voiced skepticism, describing the thread as “one of the most mid-curve” he had encountered. He suggested that many of the assumptions regarding 0xSisyphus’ role in the alleged rug pull were based on “unrelated events without facts.”

Doubts Linger

Adding to the intrigue, 0xSisyphus had previously offered a substantial 1,000 ETH bounty to anyone capable of identifying the wallet address responsible for draining the AnubisDAO pool. This act, coupled with the engagement of law enforcement in both the United States and Hong Kong, raises doubts 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 allegations, uncertain of the true identity behind 0xSisyphus and the events surrounding the AnubisDAO rug pull.

Featured image from Paxful