The CEO of the world’s largest NFT marketplace, OpenSea, Devin Finzer shared on Twitter that they were going to lay off about one fifth of their employees. As crypto market prices continue to go down, sustaining crypto-related firms has become difficult.
Today is a hard day for OpenSea, as we’re letting go of ~20% of our team. Here’s the note I shared with our team earlier this morning: pic.twitter.com/E5k6gIegH7
— Devin Finzer (dfinzer.eth) (@dfinzer) July 14, 2022
The crypto crash is giving hard times to crypto firms
NFT markets followed Bitcoin’s fall of more than 60% from its all-time high of $69000 in November 2021, and after reaching a monthly volume of $16 billion in May, it has fallen to just $1 billion in June, though it is still much higher than the trading volume of July 2021 of $350 million.
Many crypto investment companies such as 3 Arrows Capital and Celsius could not survive this cold winter and filed for bankruptcy, while others, such as Coinbase, reduced their staff by 18% back in mid June.
Finzer said in the tweet that they have entered an era of cold and global economic instability due to rising inflation rates. OpenSea has to prepare for the possible indefinite downturn.
OpenSea will use this winter as a time to build themselves. They did not specify the number of staff being laid off, but currently they have 230 employees, which suggests that around 57 people were removed.
OpenSea is experiencing a decline in user base as well as other issues, such as the fact that their former employee was charged with money laundering and fraud by the Justice Department in June.
The laid off employees will receive company benefits such as health insurance, which they will receive till 2023; accelerated equity vesting; and twelve weeks of severance pay.
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