Quick take:
- OpenSea has let go of 20% of its staff.
- The leading NFT marketplace pointed to pressure from the crypto winter as the main catalyst.
- The company said it has confidence it won’t need to lay off more staff in the foreseeable future.
OpenSea has joined the list of blockchain companies reducing the number of staff amid the crypto winter. The leading NFT marketplace announced on Thursday that it had let go 20% of its staff.
OpenSea co-founder and CEO Devin Finzer posted a screenshot of the statement sent to staff saying that it was confident it won’t need to undertake “another exercise like this” in the foreseeable future.
“The changes we’re making today put us in a position to maintain multiple years of runway under various crypto winter scenarios (5 years at the current volume), and give us high confidence that we will only have to go through this process once,” the statement read.
According to Opensea’s LinkedIn page, the company has 769 employees. Although the exact number of staff let go was not disclosed, this would imply at least 150 employees.
OpenSea follows other leading blockchain companies that have been forced to reduce their staff numbers amid the bear crypto market.
Last month, leading crypto exchange services provider Coinbase revealed it will be laying off 18% of its workforce, representing more than 1,000 employees. Crypto.com let go of 260 people, Gemini cut its workforce by roughly 100 people while embattled crypto lender BlockFi reduced the number of its employees by 170 before FTX acquired it for $240 million.
The crypto downturn saw NFT activity fall significantly in June, with transaction volume across leading NFT marketplaces falling to the lowest level since July 2021.
The current data also suggests that July is likely to register even lower numbers, implying the crypto winter may be far from over. According to the Dune Analytics dashboard prepared by @hildobby, NFT transaction volume spiked earlier this year, before experiencing a sharp decline in May and June.
OpenSea has also been plagued by endless attacks from hackers. The company recently revealed that some of the customer data may have been compromised after an employee of its email vendor leaked addresses to an unauthorised third party.
A former head of product at the NFT marketplace was also indicted for NFT insider trading, although at the time of arrest the person had already been relieved of their duties at the organisation.
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