OpenSea to Lay off 20% of Employees

blockchain.news:

OpenSea has become the new victim of the ongoing crypto winter as it has decided to slash its workforce.

According to a report from the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), the non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace has announced that it will cut a fifth or 20% of its staff.

OpenSea, one of the largest marketplaces for NFTs, suggested that about 57 people will be laid off as it said it now has 230 employees.

While, according to TechCrunch, the company's LinkedIn page indicates it has 769 employees, which would mean roughly 150 people lost their jobs.

Chief Executive Devin Finzer said in an internal memo to employees, also shared on Twitter, that the firm would provide severance and healthcare coverage into 2023 to those laid off. Finzer added that accelerated equity vesting will also be provided.

«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 only have to go through this process once,» Finzer said.

The layoffs are a contradiction to Finzer's claims in January after raising $300 million in venture capital funding when he said that the funds would be used to hire 90 new employees and establish a fund for creators.

As the crash in cryptocurrency prices has continued to wreak havoc on digital-asset firms, the market capitalization of digital currencies is now below $1 trillion — a big drop from nearly $3 trillion in late 2021, data from <dfn data-info=«CoinMarketCap is the world» s most-referenced price-tracking website for="" cryptoassets in the rapidly growing cryptocurrency space. its>CoinMarketCap showed.

The layoff has come at a time when the NFT marketplace has been experiencing a