NFT Marketplace OpenSea lays off approx. 20% of employees
OpenSea has found itself stuck in the ongoing crypto winter, and since it does not have enough food for the entire crew, it has made the difficult choice to throw a few shipmates overboard.
The company’s CEO Devin Finzer copied an internal message on his Twitter told employees that they reduced the total number of employees by around 20%. He said they gave them severance pay, including help finding new jobs and health care until 2023.
The company LinkedIn shows the total number of employees as 769, but earlier reports from last year showed that the team had very little manpower to process the total NFT volume. OpenSeas job page still lists several open senior and software engineering positions.
“We’ve been through the winter before, and we built this company with the cyclicality of crypto in mind,” Finzer wrote. “Nevertheless, the reality is that we have entered into a unique combination of cryptocurrency and broad macroeconomic instability.”
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The CEO further said that these cuts will allow the company to operate “under different crypto-winter scenarios.” He also said he was sure this was the last time they would have to make such drastic cuts.
OpenSea’s beleagured captain said he expects there to be “an explosion in innovation and utility across NFTs.” What it will look like is someone’s guess. There have been some attempts new uses for NFTsbut the biggest movement in space has come from delayed attempts to monetize a flatlining trend from such as Snapchat or toy company Mattel.
OpenSea is still the biggest name in the NFT area, with CNBC once calling the platform “Amazon of NFTsThe company reported a monthly trading volume of $ 5 billion in January, and it continues to maintain the highest number of traders compared to other marketplaces.
OpenSea is now joining the gallery with other crypto companies cutting employees to deal with financial uncertainty. Businesses like Coin base, BlockFi and Crypto.com have all introduced massive staff cuts. It comes at a time when the price of most cryptocurrencies is on the bottom of the sea. But specifically for NFTs, there has been a bearish attitude associated with the market. NFT sales volume is down almost across the board.
But OpenSea itself may be part of the problem, rather than the solution. The largest NFT marketplace has been on the defensive since the beginning of this year, when the company proved that a majority of the tokens were made in the free coin tool. were fake or spam. In February, the company was confused when a phishing attack allowed hackers steal $ 1.7 million in NFTs from users. A former OpenSea product manager was recently arrested for allegedly using insider knowledge to make money on NFT sales.
The company introduced a new verification system in May that was intended to deal with accused counterfeits, but with muted rollout of other NFT platforms from such as Salesforce, and with Reddit even trying to hide its own tokens by just not calling them NFTsit’s hard to see where any additional enthusiasm for tokens of the nonworked variety will come from.
