OpenSea’s Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Brian Roberts, has left the company after just 10 months.
Leave OpenSea as CFO, but will remain as advisor
This was stated by the CFO via a post on LinkedIn. In it he said it was time to ‘come ashore’, from the ‘open sea’. However, he did not give an exact reason for his departure. He is reportedly staying on as a consultant. In December of last year, Roberts was appointed CFO of OpenSea after spending 7 years with Lyft. However, the role at OpenSea does not seem to have been fulfilled for long.
One of his main responsibilities during his time at OpenSea was to grow the finance team. In his Linkedin post, Roberts noted the following:
I had the rare opportunity to literally build a team from scratch and pick out the game changers.
Optimistic about Web3
Although Roberts is now resigning from his role at OpenSea, he still remains very optimistic about Web3. The timing of his departure comes somewhat out of the blue. Another OpenSea manager also announced his resignation on the same day.
This was Ryan Foutty, the Vice President of Business Development at OpenSea. He had held office for 18 months but decided to resign. The company, he said, had come a long way since its inception and wished everyone at the company the best.
NFT market down significantly since January
Since the end of January, NFT-related trading volume has fallen by about 98%, from $6.2 billion in January to more than $114 million today. In turn, the NFT market has suffered significant setbacks.
While the market initially managed to gain enormous popularity in a short period of time, the market took a sharp fall in May. It also didn’t help that the crypto market itself was not rising. However, it is not known whether this downward trend is permanent.