NFT Marketplace OpenSea cuts 20% of employees

Non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace OpenSea will lay off 20% of the number of employees in the midst of the downturn in the crypto market, according to a Thursday (July 14) Twitter post from CEO and co-founder Devin Finzer.

Finzer said “macroeconomic instability” was another contributing factor, due to a “unique” combination of both a crypto winter in the midst of broader, general instability. As such, he said the company had to start preparing for “the possibility of a prolonged downturn.”

The people who are leaving us are smart, hard-working, mission-driven people who have played an immense role in expanding OpenSea and the NFT area to where we are today. We will miss them and they will forever be a part of our history and community.

– Devin Finzer (dfinzer.eth) (@dfinzer) July 14, 2022

In his post, Finzer said that the redundancies would help the company get into a position to survive for several years even if the crypto conditions remain serious.

Finzer said that those who have been laid off from the company will receive “generous severance pay, health coverage into 2023 and accelerated earning of equity for those who have not hit their cliff”. He also said that it would be an attempt to help them with job placement.

There are several other companies that have laid off employees to cope with the economic volatility, including Coinbase, Banxa, Bullfish, Celsius, Genesis, Crypto.com, BlockFi, Bitpanda and 2TM. OpenSea has also made other changes, including moving to the Seaport Protocol to reduce gas taxes.

PYMNTS wrote earlier this year that OpenSea had stopped allowing Sand Vegas Casino Club to trade Gambling Apes NFTs. The company said regulators in Alabama and Texas considered them unregistered securities.

Read more: OpenSea Stops Gambling Apes NFT Trading From Sand Vegas Casino Club

Gambling Ape’s NFT holders could still participate in the profit sharing from the revenues of the casinos. The report said the team worked with attorneys in those states in “good faith” to help with the next steps.

The report noted that the team plans to work with laws and regulations, although it said it had not been subject to any registration requirements, nor had it been contacted by any government organization about the registration.

Prior to that, Sand Vegas had predicted revenue of around $ 24,480 from Gambler NFTs.