Breaking: OpenSea Cuts Down Staff Strength by 20 Percent
- OpenSea has blamed macroeconomic instability and the general downturn in the crypto market for the layoff.
Popular NFT marketplace, OpenSea, has fired 20 percent of its employees. The company’s CEO, Devin Finzer, announced via Twitter on Thursday. Part of his notes to staff members states that the company decided to prepare ahead for a possibly long period of the current crypto winter.
Finzer also wrote that the instability of the broader macroeconomy is another reason the OpenSea board took this tough decision. The platform’s CEO claimed that the company could survive another five years of crypto winter following the layoffs and current transaction volume on the OpenSea platform.
OpenSea Plays Safe
He added that if both conditions remain, OpenSea won’t need to lay off more staff. Following the tough steps OpenSea took today, it solidifies its position as a leader in the NFT space.
The layoff means OpenSea’s employees are no longer 275 but 230. Earlier in the year, the NFT marketplace completed a series C fund investing round, generating $300 million. Consequently, the firm’s valuation rose to $13 billion.
The company’s CEO announced that OpenSea would use the majority of the funds to improve the response rate of its customer support desk. Specifically, the company plans to double its staff strength from 60 to 120. However, most of these new hires will work in the customer support department.
Besides struggling with technical issues, the marketplace has also dealt with plagiarism complaints, hacks, and scams. Hence, it is no surprise that OpenSea has been involved in multiple legal disputes. Despite its well-documented issues, Forbes named OpenSea CEO (Finzer) and the company’s co-founder, Alex Atallah, as the first NFT billionaires earlier this year.
The media outlet valued the billionaires’ wealth at $2.2 billion each. Often, the OpenSea board has been the cause of its misfortunes. Last month, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) arrested an ex-employee of the firm, Nate Chastain.
Chastain was accused of running an insider trading scheme during his time as an OpenSea employee. Also, there was a lot of uproar by OpenSea users when the marketplace announced a restriction on the number of NFTs users could create per day. The uproar was so much that the OpenSea team reversed its decision immediately.
An Alarming Rate
OpenSea is the latest crypto firm to lay off its employees or stop hiring in the last couple of months. However, OpenSea is arguably the first NFT platform to sack its employees based on crypto winter and harsh macroeconomic conditions. Many other crypto firms that laid off their staff have been crypto exchanges.
Since May, Gemini, Bullish.com, Coinbase, and Crypto.com are among the famous crypto firms that have sacked their employees for the reasons stated above. Apart from layoffs, some crypto firms such as Three Arrows Capital and Celsius have suffered liquidation or have insolvency issues.
Rebecca is a Senior Staff Writer at BitcoinWisdom, working hard to bring you the latest breaking news in the cryptocurrency market. In the words of Elon Musk “Buy stock in several companies that make products & services that *you* believe in. Only sell if you think their products & services are trending worse. Don’t panic when the market does. This will serve you well in the long-term.”
