The controversial KOL may be an OpenSea executive who led the $60 million fundraising project AnubisDAO

律动BlockBeats · 2023-10-08T10:13:17.000Z

The recent community discussion on the identity of the well-known KOL Sisyphus (@0xSisyphus) has attracted great attention. Not only because his true identity is likely to be an OpenSea executive, but also because of his many previous controversial behaviors. Sisyphus once purchased the expensive NFT Etherrock 72, fragmented it in the NFT fragmentation protocol Fractional (Fractional has shut down in 2023 and ended all operations) into PEBBLE tokens, and sold them at a very high premium. Priced in ETH, the PEBBLE token is down more than 99% from its highs. As of publication, the market value of PEBBLE tokens is US$450,000, far exceeding Etherrock’s floor price of US$180,000. At the same time, PEBBLE’s official website pebble.xyz has also expired and is in the sale stage.

Recently, the community has been discussing the identity of the well-known KOL Sisyphus (@0xSisyphus), which has attracted a lot of attention. Not only because his real identity is likely to be an OpenSea executive, but also because of his many controversial behaviors in the past.
Sisyphus once bought the expensive NFT Etherrock 72, and fragmented it into PEBBLE tokens on the NFT fragmentation protocol Fractional (Fractional was shut down in 2023 and ended all operations) and sold it at a very high premium. Priced in ETH, the PEBBLE token has fallen by more than 99% from its high point. As of the time of writing, the market value of the PEBBLE token is US$450,000, far exceeding the floor price of Etherrock of US$180,000. At the same time, PEBBLE's official website pebble.xyz has expired and is in the sales stage.
But this is not the most controversial aspect of Sisyphus.
When meme tokens and OHM were popular, Sisyphus led the creation of a forked project, AnubisDAO. Under the dual influence of Sisyphus's cheering and market enthusiasm, the project received support from tens of thousands of Ethereum in a few days on the IDO platform Copper, worth $60 million, and quickly RUG within a day after the fundraising. Investors' money quickly disappeared without a trace and has not been recovered to this day.
 Related Reading:
"AnubisDAO took away $60 million in 3 days, a timeline review from its establishment to its disappearance"
"Investigation into the $60 million theft of AnubisDAO continues, the perpetrator is suspected to be a Chinese national"
Recently, NFT Ethics published a series of articles analyzing and exposing the true identity of Sisyphus and AnubisDAO, pointing out that Sisyphus' true identity is Kevin Pawlak, the investment director of OpenSea, and that some funds from AnubisDAO participated in the hype of the well-known meme token PEPE. Chain Detective Zach believes that some of these analysis sections are far-fetched, but Tim Copeland, the editor-in-chief of The blcok, confirmed Sisyphus' identity.
Rhythm has summarized and concluded many articles on NFT Ethics. The full text is as follows.
Why is Sisyphus Kevin Pawlak, OpenSea’s head of investment?
NFT Ethics shows that pawlak.eth and sisyphus.eth have surprisingly consistent on-chain activity times. For example, both addresses minted Zorbs (ZORB) within a minute of each other. Even though there were 16 days of inactivity before, pawlak.eth minted sismo.eth (SDAO) within 10 minutes of sisyphus.
Subsequently, NFT Ethics stated that many people confirmed to it that Sisyphus was indeed Kevin Pawlak (his identity was well known in the small circle). Within 24 hours of the article being published, the decoding address of pawlak.eth was changed, and Sisyphus blocked NFT Ethics.
Funds from AnubisDAO, a $60 million aborted project, were used to participate in the PEPE hype
NFT Ethics said that there is reason to believe that Anubis's escape was an organized incident, and that some funds were also involved in the hype of PEPE.
First, Sisyphus mentioned before Anubis ran away that he had already purchased $420,000 of Anubis tokens and would buy more. In the worst case, if it doesn't work as expected, everyone can get their money back. He also guaranteed that the project will not run away (Rug pull).
The wallets associated with Anubis's escape had funds from a Seychelles trading platform called FixedFloat, which has no KYC and an unknown founder. It has been used many times to launder money and as a source of funds for hackers. Most of the participants in the initial stage of PEPE had funds from FixedFloat. For example, the funding sources of PEPE big players DegenHarambe (Zach Testa) and SumFattyTuna (Max Zim) were also FixedFloat.
According to NFT Ethics, Sisyphus has a close relationship with these two people, and Zim is said to be his former roommate. They had exchanges in terms of funds and media interviews before Anubis ran away.
Based on the on-chain detective Zach's observation of Tornado Cash, he summarized a series of wallets that are likely to be the stolen funds from Anubis. These wallets use a simple and unified method to withdraw funds from Tornado Cash.
NFT Ethics used the same method as before to speculate. Within 2 minutes after the Anubis Rug wallet transferred 3,000 ETH, Zim's wallet interacted on the chain. At the same time, according to the list of wallets related to the Anubis incident compiled by Zach, Zim was buying PEPE tokens when the wallets in the list were active. Since the stolen funds of Anubis were basically transferred out before July 2023, and some wallets in Zach's list transferred funds from Stake to FixedFloat after the release date of PEPE (April 14), NFT Ethics suspected that this part of the funds participated in the hype of PEPE, and even PEPE was released because of this money.
Finally, after NFT Ethics mocked Sisyphus for not caring about decentralization, it entered the luxury mansion segment that is popular in the crypto field: Sisyphus (Kevin Pawlak) bought a $3.3 million mansion in mid-to-late 2022, and recently purchased a Rolls-Royce and a Lamborghini, with a total value of more than $1 million.
Recently, facing the accusations from other community members that he only knows how to "dig, withdraw, and sell" but lacks the spirit of encryption, Sisyphus said: I just don't care about decentralization, haha.
Sisyphus's Response
Perhaps troubled by the many long articles on NFT Ethics, Sisyphus said at the end of September,
"Recently for some reason I have been receiving questions about Anubis again. As you know, I filed a report with the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) when the incident occurred and have been cooperating in efforts to get my money back. We have met several times, including in 2023. The case number is NY02OM22NY0001."
After Ledger, the host of the well-known crypto talk show Uponly, left a message on NFT Ethics’ long article about Anubis, Sisyphus said, “If he thinks the content is true, he should continue to send it to government departments.”
More users said that Sisyphus should go to jail or that Sisyphus is the next Zhu Su. The most interesting comment came from community member GwartyGwart, "I haven't been able to sleep well since I found out that Sisyphus doesn't care about decentralization at all."
As for issues such as identity and endorsement of the gambling project Rollbit, neither Sisyphus himself nor OpenSea responded positively.