NFT marketplace OpenSea lays off about 20% of employees

Non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace OpenSea, has announced that it has downsized its workforce by 20% to cut costs amid the economic downturn. 

Devin Finzer, CEO and co-founder of the company took to Twitter to make the announcement of the layoffs and said that laid-off employees would receive severance pay and health insurance coverage. 

Finzer conveyed the message to employees in an internal Slack channel. The message read: “@channel Hi all, we made an incredibly sad and difficult decision to reduce the size of our team by ~20%, and today we’re saying goodbye to many of our friends and team members across OpenSea”. 

"Each of the people leaving has played a critical role in OpenSea's journey. They have supported our users, championed our mission, and worked intensely to build the foundations of the NFT space," he added. 

Finzer also mentioned that these employees are talented and committed and they will be missed and "we plan to treat them with great care". 

He further said that he expects that the company will see an explosion in innovation and utility across NFTs by this winter and added, "With the hard (but important) changes we made today, we're in an even better position to capture what will soon become the largest market on the planet.” 

Despite being the most popular NFT marketplace, in recent months, it has been a hotbed of scams and hacks, reported Vice, with countless people having their NFTs hijacked or laundered through the marketplace. The sales of NFTs have plummeted over the last few weeks, Bloomberg reported. 

Opensea is the latest web 3.0 firm to enter crypto winter, a period when the value of cryptos continue to plummet for an extensive period of time compared to prior high. Recent months have witnessed mass layoffs being announced at crypto firms and exchanges. Since June, Coinbase has laid off over 1000 employees. Other global crypto firms, including, Gemini, BlockFi, BitMex, Robinhood, Crypto.com, Bybit, and Vauld, among others followed suit. 

On the other hand, some global crypto exchanges, including Binance, and Polygon, are hiring thousands of new employees in the midst of the economic downturn.