NFT Marketplace SuperRare cuts 30% of staff: “We overstaffed”
by James · January 7, 2023
SuperRare Labs, the company behind NFT marketplace SuperRare, became the latest crypto player to cut jobs on Friday, announcing that it will reduce staff by 30%.
The news came from SuperRare CEO John Crain, who tweeted out a message he sent to employees in Slack.
Citing aggressive growth and over-hiring as the reasons for the reduction, Crain’s said he takes “full ownership of this mistake.”
“In order to correct course, we have made the difficult decision to size our team, to ensure that SuperRare Labs will be able to continue to serve our community of artists, collectors and curators while remaining the destination for the best crypto species in the world,” wrote he. .
Launched in 2018, SuperRare is a social network for art creators and collectors of NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain. NFTs are blockchain-based tokens linked to digital and physical content, providing proof of ownership, authenticity or membership in a group.
Since its launch, several big names in sports and entertainment have taken their digital art projects to SuperRare.
In March 2021, SuperRare raised 9 million dollars in a Series A funding round led by Velvet Sea Ventures and crypto fund 1confirmation. Mark Cuban, Ashton Kutcher’s Sound Ventures and SamsungNext joined the raise. In November of the same year, hip-hop artist and NFT collector Snoop Dogg launched an NFT collaboration with mixed media artist Coldie at SuperRare during Miami Art Week. In May 2022, music icon Madonna collaborated with digital artist Beeple to launch an NFT collection on SuperRare.
Crain said SuperRare would help those affected by the layoffs transition to new opportunities.
While the news of the reduction may sound dire for the company, Crain tried to sound optimistic in his memo to employees, saying there’s still a lot of innovation and transformation to come for Web3 and digital art.
“We face headwinds, yes – but an incredible untapped opportunity remains as we continue to build something entirely new: a global digital art renaissance that is transparent, fair and accessible to anyone from anywhere in the world,” he said.
Decrypt contacted SuperRare for further comment but have yet to hear back.
Just a few days into 2023, several crypto companies have announced layoffs due to the extended crypto winter and contagion from the 2022 collapse of Terra, Three Arrows Capital, and FTX. Silvergate capital cut 40% of its workforce, the crypto lending firm Genesis cuts 30%, and crypto exchange Huobi cuts 20%.
But it’s not just crypto-suffering layoffs: major tech companies from Salesforce to Amazon cuts jobs as the US economy continues to suffer in the new year.
