NFT Marketplace, OpenSea Lays Off 20% of Staff, Cites Crypto Winter

OpenSea, co-founder Devin Finzer has announced on his Twitter account that the company will lay off 20% of its workers.

OpenSea NFT Marketplace

OpenSea is a decentralized marketplace that allows users to buy and sell non-fungible tokens. Founded in 2017, the NFT exchange initially began as a market for CryptoKitties but has expanded beyond collectibles.

Finzer cited the crypto winter as the driving force behind the decision, according to a report. 

He said the decision was necessary “to be in a solid position.” He is convinced that the bear market will bring a lot of “innovation to the ecosystem.”

“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’ve supported our users, championed our mission, and worked intensely to build the foundations of the N FT space. They are talented and committed and they will be missed – and we plan to treat them with great care.

Today is a hard day for OpenSea, as we’re letting go of ~20% of our team. Here’s the note I shared with our team earlier this morning: pic.twitter.com/E5k6gIegH7

— Devin Finzer (dfinzer.eth) (@dfinzer) July 14, 2022

“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.”

Finzer went on to say:

“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.

“During this winter, I expect that we’ll see an explosion in innovation and utility across NFTs… Winter is our time to build”, he said.