NFT Startup Immutable lays off employees despite boasting growth plans
Australian technology startup Immutable has laid off a number of employees, including senior designers, just months after securing a $200 million funding round.
CNET revealed that despite job cuts and warnings of future layoffs, Immutable CEO and co-founder James Ferguson assured employees that the company is in “a fantastic position” during a 30-minute Google Meet conference call.
James Wakeham, a senior level game designer with the non-fungible token (NFT) trading card game, Gods Unchained, changed his Twitter bio to read “looking for work”, explaining that “Me and a bunch of people just got made redundant on immutable ”.
In accordance CNET, the majority of the layoffs were employees who worked on the development of Gods Unchained. Still, according to the company’s website, it is still looking to hire three more employees.
Wakeham also revealed that the circumstances surrounding the layoff invalidate the employees’ non-compete clause. Affected employees were also told that they could apply for other positions within the company.
Still, plans for unchanging expansion
The news comes just months after the startup closed a massive funding round to develop its Layer-2 scaling platform and blockchain play.
In March, the company was valued at $2.5 billion, up from the previous valuation of $410 million.
But job cuts have plagued the Web3 space, with marketplace OpenSea announcing earlier this month that the company will lay off 20% of its staff.
The market downturn has dealt a significant blow to the labor market. As of July 2, at least 3,500 cryptocurrency marketing, human resources, technical support and programming specialists from around the world have been laid off.
Several other platforms have stopped hiring. Coinbase announced last month that it would withdraw job offers in addition to cutting 18% of its workforce, or about 1,100 positions.
India alone, where the exchange had planned to expand hiring earlier this year, accounted for 8% of the losses.
BlockFi has also cut 20% of its workforce and Crypto.com has laid off 5% of its staff as fears of a crypto winter grip the market.
However, Immutable appears to be expanding rapidly despite the decision to cut staff.
A spokesperson said recently that the business had grown from 120 full-time employees at the start of the year to 280 in June, and planned to reach 360 by the end of the year.
Although the same cannot be said for Gods Unchained’s user base. While activity on the chain has been positive over the past 30 days, the year so far has seen a general decline in users, volumes and transactions, according to DappRadar.
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