NFT Marketplaces Trading Volume Decreases, OpenSea CFO Resigned

• Roberts said he was still “incredibly bullish on web3 and especially OpenSea.
• Ryan Foutty, the vice president of BD at OpenSea, also announced his resignation.

Brian Roberts, the chief financial officer (CFO) of NFT marketplace OpenSea, has left his position less than a year after joining, according to a Friday update on his LinkedIn profile. The resignation made him the most prominent Web3 executive to exit during the bear market.

As the CFO of OpenSea, Roberts is the former CFO of the dominant ride-hailing giant Lyft. He joined OpenSea last December as its NFT marketplace’s first finance employee and developed the finance team from the ground up. However, Roberts stated that he would continue to serve as an advisor to OpenSea. 

In a LinkedIn post, Roberts stated that he was still “incredibly bullish on web3 and especially OpenSea.” But he didn’t provide a complete reason for his resignation. Furthermore, Ryan Foutty, the vice president of business development at OpenSea, also announced his resignation from the NFT company in a post on LinkedIn on October 7.

OpenSea Steps Towards The Marketplace

OpenSea raised $300 million in a Series C fundraising round earlier this year, which is valued at $13.3 billion. Following the fundraising, OpenSea obtained the NFT aggregator Gem and the crypto wallet company Dharma Labs.

Following that, the NFT platform announced that it would enable Ethereum proof of stake (PoS) NFTs. Additionally, the Web3 marketplace disclosed that any Ethereum forks made as a result of the move will not be supported on its network.

But, the largest NFT marketplace, OpenSea, reported a more than 30% decline in volumes last month. Also, the volume of NFT trading has significantly decreased recently. Trading volume on NFT marketplaces backed by Ethereum fell by around 18% last month to $504 million.

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