{"id":12209,"date":"2022-07-15T00:32:16","date_gmt":"2022-07-15T00:32:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nftandcrypto-news.com\/nft\/opensea-just-laid-off-20-of-its-staff\/"},"modified":"2022-07-15T00:32:18","modified_gmt":"2022-07-15T00:32:18","slug":"opensea-just-laid-off-20-of-its-staff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nftandcrypto-news.com\/nft\/opensea-just-laid-off-20-of-its-staff\/","title":{"rendered":"OpenSea Just Laid Off 20% of Its Staff"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

OpenSea has let 20 percent of its staff go, in a colossal decision to weather the crypto winter that everyone in the NFT space is living in, according to a tweet from Co-Founder and CEO OpenSea Devin Finzer<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And while the broader context of a market downturn has many worried about the wider Web3 and NFT space, Finzer stressed his belief that we\u2019re in for an \u201cexplosion in innovation and utility across NFTs,\u201d hinting at a brighter future for everyone.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n

Today is a hard day for OpenSea, as we\u2019re letting go of ~20% of our team. Here\u2019s the note I shared with our team earlier this morning: pic.twitter.com\/E5k6gIegH7<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Devin Finzer (dfinzer.eth) (@dfinzer) July 14, 2022<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

OpenSea\u2019s CEO prepares for a \u2018prolonged downturn\u2019<\/h2>\n

While the crypto markets are living in a depression, many top players have shied away from saying so. But the NFT marketplace just took a major blow from OpenSea\u2019s move to cut 20 percent of its employees. And CEO Finzer doesn\u2019t hesitate to state the reality of the crypto world in 2022:<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026[T]he reality is that we have entered an unprecedented combination of crypto winter and broad macroeconomic instability, and we need to prepare the company for the possibility of a prolonged downturn,\u201d Finzer wrote in a screen-capped message to his staff that he later shared on his Twitter page.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe changes we\u2019re 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,\u201d added Finzer, expressing his belief that this was a measure of cautious foresight, not a sign of the end.<\/p>\n

OpenSea didn\u2019t say precisely how many employees were losing their jobs in the wake of this decision, but its LinkedIn page suggests 750+ employees are still working there. Finzer added that employees affected by this decision will receive severance, including health insurance \u201cinto 2023,\u201d in addition to equity vesting.<\/p>\n

In January of this year, OpenSea declared its valuation of $13 billion after completing a round of Series C funding that totaled $300 million. Back then, OpenSea had only 90 employees, but with the new funding, Finzer said he intended to \u201cgrow the team\u201d of customer service employees, inflating its ranks from 60 to 120 \u2060\u2014 which would boost the user experience for customers.<\/p>\n

And since new year\u2019s 2022, the global economy has changed a lot, to put it mildly. Bracketing the geopolitical shifts of the world, the NFT marketplace has faced repeated complaints of plagiarism, in addition to scams, hacks, and even legal issues.<\/p>\n

Advances made during the crypto winter could elevate NFTs in the future<\/h2>\n

In contrast to these complications, Finzer and OpenSea Co-Founder Alex Atallah were dubbed the first NFT billionaires, both valued at $2.2 billion, in a recent Forbes<\/em> report. Notably, some of the legal trouble with OpenSea involved a former employee named Nate Chastain, who was arrested in June for alleged insider trading schemes \u2060\u2014 a first for the NFT marketplace.<\/p>\n

Then the decision to limit the number of NFTs someone could mint in a single day brought chaos to the digital marketplace, before OpenSea\u2019s executives reversed that move, and booted Iran-based OpenSea users to keep the firm aligned with U.S. sanctions against the nation.<\/p>\n

Of course, OpenSea isn\u2019t alone in its journey through the long crypto winter. In June, several crypto startups, including crypto.com, Gemini, and even Coinbase, declared layoffs in a significant downturn for the NFT market. Meanwhile, the crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital has continued to be liquidated, and its founders seem to have vanished.<\/p>\n

Every sector of nearly every industry is suffering downturns amid the macroeconomic prospect of a prolonged depression, from fossil fuel prices inflating to food and energy shortages. But Finzer isn\u2019t wrong to point to the other side of the turbulent river, because advances made during this downturn will directly determine how high and for how long the next golden age for NFTs will fly.<\/p>\n

This was breaking news about OpenSea\u2019s significant staff cuts and was regularly updated as new information became available.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n