Rumors of insider trading on the OpenSea NFT platform received official confirmation. One of the employees used the information about the upcoming listings for the purpose of his own enrichment.

“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,” the company wrote on its blog, adding that it accepted the resignation of this employee.

While the statement did not include the name of the employee, many believed that it was OpenSea's head of product, Nate Chastain. Twitter user @ZuwuTV accused him of using secret crypto wallets to advance sales on the platform.

ZuwuTV traced transactions through the public blockchain and concluded that Chastain was buying NFTs shortly before the OpenSea platform posted them on its main page. After listing new tokens, Chastain sold the purchased coins. According to the Chinese media resource 8btc, Chastain could have made more than 18,875 ETH ($67,000) on insider trading.

In a written statement, OpenSea called the incident “incredibly disappointing” and added that it is "conducting an immediate and thorough third party review.” The company refused to confirm the name of the employee seen in insider trading.

Chastain's public LinkedIn account is now listed as “unavailable.”

“We have also implemented the following policies:

OpenSea team members may not buy or sell from collections or creators while we are featuring or promoting them (e.g. on our home page);

and OpenSea team members are prohibited from using confidential information to purchase or sell any NFTs, whether available on the OpenSea platform or not,” OpenSea announced.

OpenSea recorded a record $ 3.4 billion in transactions last month, according to Dune Analytics.