By
Chimamanda U. Martha
April 18th, 2024
Despite the layoffs, the company will not take its eyes off its core goals which are to build a sustainable and “build a foundational layer for new, peer-to-peer economies.”
OpenSea, the largest Non-Fungible Token (NFT) marketplace in the digital currency ecosystem, has revealed that it has parted ways with approximately 20% of its staff, becoming the latest crypto-firm to do so. While the number of affected employees was not disclosed, OpenSea reportedly confirmed to The Block that it has as many as 230 employees left on its payroll.
The unprecedented retrenchment was preceded by the announcement from OpenSea co-founder, Alex Atallah who said he will be leaving his active role in the company by next month. The latest retrenchment among many things will reposition OpenSea as a fully restructured company in terms of employee engagement.
Taking to Twitter to share an excerpt of the message he send to the staff at the firm, Chief Executive Officer, Devin Finzer said the employees being let go have no issues with the firm, rather they are smart people that have contributed to the success of the company.
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
However, the current economic climate has made the decision to lay off the staff to be a necessity, as the company is optimistic about its role in the future of the NFT space.
“The folks leaving us are smart, hardworking, mission-driven individuals who’ve played an immeasurable role in growing OpenSea and the NFT space to where we are today. We will miss them and they will forever be part of our story and community,” Devin said in a Twitter thread, adding that he has an “immense conviction in the NFT space & in OpenSea’s role in it. During this winter, we’ll see an explosion in innovation across the ecosystem. And with the changes we’ve made, we’re in a strong position to continue driving the space forward.”
Despite the layoffs, Devin said the company will not take its eyes off its core goals which are to build a sustainable and “build a foundational layer for new, peer-to-peer economies.”
OpenSea Staff Layoff: an Industry-Wide Wave
Retrenchment is the order of the day in the digital currency ecosystem of today, a measure most firms employ to withstand the current crypto winter that many of them were not prepared for. The bigger firms, Coinbase Global Inc (NASDAQ: COIN), and Gemini pioneered this move when the former laid off 18% of its workforce and the latter 10% of its staff.
Since these two made the announcement a few weeks back, a lot of companies have followed suit as many explored avenues to reduce their operating costs to the barest minimum. While these firms are shedding off their staff, a slew of others, including Binance exchange and Kraken have announced plans to continue adding to their teams irrespective of the outlook in the digital currency ecosystem.
— LooksRare (@LooksRare) July 14, 2022
Other NFT marketplaces, including LooksRare, also seem to be taking advantage of the OpenSea announcement to pitch their platforms to laid-off staff who may want to send in an application.