OpenSea will lay off 20% of employees

OpenSea has become the new victim of the ongoing crypto winter as they have decided to cut the workforce.

According to a report by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), the marketplace non-fungible token (NFT) has announced that it will cut one-fifth or 20% of employees.

OpenSea, one of the largest marketplaces for NFTs, indicated that around 57 people would be laid off as it said it now has 230 employees.

While, according to TechCrunch, The company’s LinkedIn page indicates that it has 769 employees, which would mean that approximately 150 people lost their jobs.

CEO Devin Finzer said in an internal memo to employees, also shared on Twitter, that the company will provide severance pay and health services into 2023 to those laid off. Finzer added that accelerated earnings of equity will also be provided.

“The changes we are making today put us in a position to maintain several years of runway under different crypto winter scenarios (5 years with today’s volume) and give us high confidence that we only need to go through this process once,” Finzer said.

The layoffs are contrary to Finzer’s claims in January after raising $ 300 million in venture capital funding when he said the funds would be used to hire 90 new employees and establish a fund for creators.

As the crash in cryptocurrency prices has continued to ravage companies with digital assets, the market value of digital currencies is now below $ 1 trillion – a big drop from almost $ 3 trillion at the end of 2021, data from CoinMarketCap knew.

The layoff has come at a time when the NFT market has experienced a declining user base. The decline only started after an incident in June when a former employee was charged with fraud and money laundering by the Ministry of Justice. The prosecution said the incident was the first case of insider trading in digital tokens, the WSJ reported.

Other cryptocurrencies that have laid off employees due to the market downturn include the US cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase Global Inc., which reduced employees by 18% in mid-June, and the company’s shares fell to almost 79% during this year.

According to a report from Blockchain.News, the crypto exchange Crypto.com and the lending platform BlockFi announced plans in early June to cut over 400 jobs globally due to pressure from difficult market conditions.

Crypto.com had said it would reduce the workforce by 5%, which is about 260 employees, while BlockFi announced a layoff of 20% of the workforce, which is around 170 people.

Data from The Block showed that the NFT market peaked in January with $ 16.6 billion in monthly volume, which was a robust growth from more than $ 350 million in July 2021. However, it fell to around $ 1 billion in June on due to a decline in activity in the digital asset sector.

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