Controversial KOL or potentially an OpenSea executive, who previously led the $60 million fundraising scam project AnubisDAO.

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23-10-08 17:52

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Recently, the community has been paying great attention to the discussion about the identity of the well-known KOL Sisyphus (@0xSisyphus). This is not only because his real identity is likely to be a high-level executive at OpenSea, but also because of his many controversial behaviors in the past.

Sisyphus once purchased the expensive NFT Etherrock 72 and fragmented it into PEBBLE tokens through the NFT fractionalization protocol Fractional (which ended all operations in 2023) and sold it at a high premium. PEBBLE tokens, priced in ETH, have fallen by over 99% from their high point. As of writing, the market value of PEBBLE tokens is $450,000, far exceeding the floor price of $180,000 for Etherrock. At the same time, PEBBLE's official website, pebble.xyz, has also expired and is in the selling phase.

But this is not the most controversial part of Sisyphus.

During the hype of meme tokens and OHM, Sisyphus once led the creation of a forked project called AnubisDAO. Under the influence of Sisyphus's rallying cry and market heat, the project gained support from tens of thousands of Ethereum within a few days, worth $60 million, but quickly became a RUG within a day after fundraising. The investors' money disappeared without a trace and has yet to be recovered.

Reference reading:

"Timeline of AnubisDAO from establishment to running away with $60 million in 3 days"

"Investigation into the $60 million theft at AnubisDAO is still ongoing, with the suspect believed to be Chinese"

Recently, NFT Ethics has released a series of articles analyzing and exposing the true identity of Sisyphus and other issues such as AnubisDAO. They pointed out that Sisyphus's real identity is Kevin Pawlak, the investment director of OpenSea, and that he participated in the hype of the well-known meme token PEPE through some funds from AnubisDAO. Chain detective Zach believes that some of the analysis is far-fetched, but The Block's editor Tim Copeland has confirmed Sisyphus's identity on Twitter.

Lu Dong has summarized and compiled multiple articles on NFT Ethics. The full text is as follows.

Why is Sisyphus referred to as Kevin Pawlak, the investment director of OpenSea?

NFT Ethics expressed that pawlak.eth and sisyphus.eth have surprisingly consistent activity times on the chain. For example, both addresses minted Zorbs (ZORB) within a minute of each other. Despite being inactive for 16 days prior, pawlak.eth still minted sismo.eth (SDAO) within 10 minutes of sisyphus.eth.

Later, NFT Ethics stated that many people confirmed to them that Sisyphus is indeed Kevin Pawlak (his identity is well known in small circles). Within 24 hours of the article's publication, the decoding address of pawlak.eth was changed, and Sisyphus blocked NFT Ethics.

涉及 6000 万美元的跑路项目 AnubisDAO 的资金参与 PEPE 炒作

Involved in the $60 million AnubisDAO scam, funds participated in PEPE speculation

NFT Ethics recently stated that there is reason to believe that Anubis is an organized run-away event, and also participated in the speculation of PEPE.

First of all, Sisyphus mentioned before Anubis ran away that he had purchased $420,000 worth of Anubis tokens and would buy more. In the worst case scenario, if things don't go as planned, everyone can get their money back. He also promised that the project would not do a rug pull.

Wallets related to running away with Anubis, their funds come from a trading platform in Seychelles called FixedFloat, which has no KYC and unknown founders, and has been used multiple times as a source of money laundering and hacker funds. The initial participants of PEPE also received funds from FixedFloat. For example, the funds of PEPE's major holders DegenHarambe (Zach Testa) and SumFattyTuna (Max Zim) also come from FixedFloat.

According to the description of NFT Ethics, Sisyphus has a close relationship with these two individuals, and it is said that Zim was his former roommate. They had financial and media interactions before fleeing from Anubis.

According to on-chain detective Zach's observation of Tornado Cash, he has identified a series of wallets that are likely to have been stolen from Anubis. These wallets have used a simple and uniform method to withdraw funds from Tornado Cash.

NFT Ethics used the same method to speculate, as seen in this tweet. Within 2 minutes of transferring 3000 ETH from the Anubis Rug wallet, Zim's wallet interacted on-chain. At the same time, according to Zach's list of wallets related to the Anubis incident, when wallets on the list were active, Zim was buying PEPE tokens. Since most of the stolen funds from Anubis were transferred out before July 2023, and some of the wallets on Zach's list transferred funds from Stake to FixedFloat after the PEPE release date (April 14), NFT Ethics suspects that this portion of the funds participated in the hype around PEPE, and that PEPE was even released because of this money.

Finally, after NFT Ethics mocked Sisyphus for not caring about decentralization, they entered the luxury real estate sector that is popular in the cryptocurrency industry: Sisyphus (Kevin Pawlak) purchased a $3.3 million mansion in the second half of 2022, and recently bought a Rolls-Royce and a Lamborghini, with a total value of over $1 million.

Recently, faced with accusations from other community members that they only know how to "mine, trade, and sell" without any spirit of cryptocurrency, Sisyphus responded: "I don't care about decentralization, haha."

Sisyphus's Response

可能是受到 NFT Ethics 的多次长文的困扰，Sisyphus 在 9 月底表示，

It may be due to the multiple long articles on NFT Ethics that Sisyphus expressed at the end of September.

"Recently, due to certain reasons, I have received questions again regarding Anubis. As you know, when the incident occurred, I submitted a report to the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and have been cooperating to recover the money. We have met several times, including in 2023. The case number is NY02OM22NY0001."

After Uponly, a well-known encryption interview program, hosted by Ledger, left a message about NFT Ethics, Sisyphus stated that "if he believes that this content is true, he should continue to send it to government departments."

More users are bluntly saying that Sisyphus should go to jail, or Sisyphus is the next Zhu Su. The most interesting comment comes from community member GwartyGwart, "I haven't been able to sleep since I found out that Sisyphus doesn't care about decentralization of power."