Brian Roberts, the chief financial officer of NFT marketplace OpenSea, has left his post after only 11 months in the position, making him the most prominent Web3 executive to leave amid the bear market.
The former CFO of ride-sharing companies Lyft and OpenSea wrote on October 7 that it was time for him to “come ashore” from the “open seas,” but he didn’t give any specifics. He did, however, say that he would continue to serve as an advisor to the firm going forward.
“I remain incredibly bullish on web3 and especially OpenSea. The company is heads down building and I assure you, the best is yet to come.”
Roberts joined OpenSea in 2021
Roberts spent seven years working for Lyft before being named the CFO of OpenSea in 2021. Additionally, he has prior work experience in corporate positions at Mircosoft and Walmart, two major American retailers.
Surojit Chatterjee, a former vice president of Google, joined Coinbase as chief product officer in 2020, and Pravjit Tiwana, a former executive at Amazon, joined Gemini as chief technology officer in January 2022. Roberts was one of many seasoned tech professionals who made the switch to Web3 over the past few years.
Growing the financial staff was one of his main duties while working at OpenSea. Roberts said in his Linkedin post. To ensure a “smooth transition,” he has reportedly been closely working with CEO Devin Finzer and VP of Strategic Finance Justin Jow, presumably implying that Jow will step up and assume the suddenly vacated CFO position.
Roberts claims that despite leaving the CFO position, he is still “extremely enthusiastic about web3.”It’s noteworthy that Roberts left OpenSea on the same day that another executive made his resignation known.
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.
Foutty wished his “crewmates” well and stated that the firm has gone a long way since operating out of co-founder Alex Atallah’s basement.
Roberts and Foutty are only the most recent people in the cryptocurrency industry to resign or accept advisory positions amid the market slump.
The volume of NFT trading has decreased 98% from the $6.2 billion seen at the end of January to only $114.4 million.
The NFT market has also seen difficulties, including 20% employee reductions in July and sharp drops in daily trading volume.