From theblock by Tim Copeland
In July, tokenized Treasury bill platform OpenEden engaged the services of Jerome Augustine, the founder of NFT fractionalization project Braq.
Augustine’s LinkedIn profile says he was the Head of Business Development and Partnerships, a title he used when appearing onstage at an event. A spokesperson for OpenEden said he was only a business development consultant and that he resigned from this position in late October “due to misalignment of expectations.” A source at OpenEden claims he is still present in the company’s Slack as of Nov. 8.
While working for OpenEden, members of the Braq community have continued to ask whether Augustine will ever make good on his promises to repay the expensive NFTs in the Braq community treasury that went mysteriously missing under his watch.
The Braq project got underway in November 2021, according to screenshots of Augustine’s previous LinkedIn profile. (His new profile, which appears to have been recently deleted or taken private, doesn’t name Braq but refers to a stealth startup instead.) It launched in early 2022, per its whitepaper, with a goal to take high-profile NFTs — like Mutant Ape Yacht Club, Doodles, Otherdeeds and Moonbirds — and fractionalize them into NFTs.
The original NFTs were fractionalized into 1,000 NFTs each representing 0.1% of the original, according to purchase agreements for two of the sales. Braq said it would custody the original NFTs and keep them separate from its own funds. It said the original NFT would be owned by all of the token holders, proportionally.
The high-value NFTs were kept secure in a two-of-three multisig, according to Nick Burns, who was closely involved with the project. This kind of multisig requires any two of the three key holders to sign a transaction for it to go through. Burns claims that Augustine controlled one of the keys, Augustine’s then-wife Anastasia Sacha controlled another and that he had the third key.
In July 2023, the project’s Mutant Ape NFT was moved out of the treasury and to another wallet where it would later be used to borrow other cryptocurrencies on NFT marketplace Blur. In October, an Otherdeed NFT was moved to the same wallet and later used to borrow more crypto on Blur. Before the end of the month, a Doodles NFT and a Moonbird NFT were also moved to the same wallet where they would be sold within weeks.