Skynet Labs, The Firm Behind Siacoin, Shuts Shop
- The company behind Siacoin, Skynet Labs, has confirmed that it will be closing its operations due to a lack of fresh funding following the September 2020 funding round led by Paradigm.
- The firm will also be laying off its employees,, but added that the key infrastructure and data will be online and remain operational.
Skynet Labs, the company behind Siacoin, revealed in a recent statement that it is shutting up shop due to a lack of funding and that the firm will also be cutting jobs as the bearish market seems to have taken a toll on the blockchain company.
While 2021 was the best year for cryptocurrency and blockchain based firms, 2022 has let down many firms due to the sheer amount of bearish activity and scams being implemented through the market. Interestingly, with the closure of Skynet Labs, the future of Siacoin, one of the earliest blockchains to focus on storage along with Filecoin (FIL), remains uncertain.
“It is with regret that we announce Skynet Labs has been unable to complete its next round of fundraising and will be shutting down. Thankfully, Skynet as a platform will be able to continue operating: all user files will remain online and key portions of the infrastructure will continue to be actively developed,”
said the firm in a blog post.
While Skynet Labs couldn’t raise more funds, it revealed that its key data and infrastructure will still be available online and developers could build on them or take inspiration from them. The blockchain company was formed in 2020 and was earlier known as Nebulous.
The firm has been backed by Paradigm, a crypto investment firm, along with Bain Capital Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, A.Capital, Collaborative Fund, Dragonfly Capital Partners, Hack VC, INBlockchain, and First Star Ventures.
In September 2020, Skynet Labs raised around $3 million in a funding round from all these firms to work on Skynet, a decentralized storage and app hosting platform that aimed to build a decentralized internet, i.e., an internet which is free from censorship and manipulation.
Skynet Labs letting go of employees
Along with closing the firm, David Vorick, the founder and CEO of the blockchain company, confirmed that will be releasing all the employees that have worked at the firm.
“Much of what Skynet has accomplished, including its ability to continue operating in the face of Skynet Lab’s dissolution, and including its ability to provide value to the wider web3 ecosystem, is owed to the efforts and contributions of the Skynet Labs team members. It is with great sadness that we will be letting the members of our team go, even though we have every need for and appreciation of their efforts,”
Vorick said.
However, in a Twitter post, Vorick stated that this is not the end of the road for the blockchain company hinting that he has plans for the near future.
Meanwhile, Skynet Labs is not the only firm to shut shop in the bearish market. Recently, BitcoinWisdom reported that Robinhood, a financial services company, also laid off employees following by major Bitcoin mining firm Compass Mining which laid off 15% employees.
A crypto journalist with over 3 years of experience in DeFi, NFT, metaverse, etc. Parth has worked with major media outlets in the crypto and finance world and has gained experience and expertise in crypto culture after surviving bear and bull markets over the years.
