Crypto hiring: Rough waters for OpenSea as NFT platform announces layoffs

OpenSea’s CEO announced a series of layoffs on Friday afternoon via a thread on Twitter, as the NFT market continues to underwhelm.

An OpenSea spokesperson told Blockworks around 50% of staff was affected. The move comes less than a month after fellow NFT startup Yuga Labs made its own round of employee cuts.

OpenSea CEO Devin Finzer also said the platform is “shifting to a smaller team with a direct connection to users.” 

The company was valued at $13.3 billion at the height of its fundraising efforts back in 2022. This was before the NFT market entered a prolonged slump, and its loss of market share to rival NFT platform Blur.

Finzer mentioned the platform will be making a “big upgrade” to OpenSea 2.0, though specifics on the update are scarce.

“With these changes, we are better positioned to deliver for the community, shipping high-impact efforts and matching the speed at which this space evolves,” a spokesperson for OpenSea said.

Other notable hiring news

• Kraken hired Bivu Das as the exchange’s UK managing director. Das previously spent seven years at Deloitte before founding a Web3 infrastructure firm in 2022.
• Seraphim Czecker left from an amorphous business development role at Lido, writing, “it’s hard to make a significant growth impact when the project is so successful already.”
• DCG retained defense lawyer Barry Berke after New York Attorney General Letitia James sued the firm for allegedly defrauding customers. Berke was the chief impeachment counsel in former US President Donald Trump’s Senate impeachment trial.

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