OpenSea – Which operates as a peer-to-peer marketplace for crypto goods, including non-fungible tokens (NFTs), collectibles, gaming items, and other virtual goods has announced to downsize its overall workforce by 20%.
This move was announced by the CEO Devin Finzer to the company on official Discord (Submitted as a tip, thanks to the employee) –
” 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 Open Sea’s journey. They’ve supported our users, championed our mission, and worked intensely to build the foundations of the NFT space. They are talented and committed and they will be missed – and we plan to treat them with great care. For those leaving us, we’ll be providing generous severance, healthcare coverage into 2023, and accelerated equity vesting for those who haven’t hit their cliff. We’ll also be helping with job placement and opening our personal networks to support them however we can. Finally, thanks to your compassion and support, we were able to notify each person one on one, in person.
We’ve been through winter before, and we built this company with the cyclicality of crypto in mind. We’ve also built a very strong balance sheet through the money we’ve raised and the product-market fit we’ve proven.
Nevertheless, the 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. 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.
We have a huge opportunity in front of us. During this winter, I expect that we’ll see an explosion in innovation and utility across NFTs. 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. When the global economy is uncertain, our mission to build the foundation for new, peer-to-peer economies feels more urgent and important than ever. Winter is our time to build.
I am so grateful to all those leaving OpenSea today, for their contributions and the time they spent with us on this journey. They have played an immeasurable role in, and will always be a part of the Open Sea story and community.”
It is also to note that the company’s co-founder, Alex Atallah recently announced on July 4th that he was stepping away from the company and will continue to remain on its board.
OpenSea was founded by Alex Atallah & Devin Finzer in 2018. The company currently has 2 million NFT collections and 80 million NFTs currently being sold on its platform. The company was valued at $13.3 billion early this year.
