OpenSea Announces Layoffs, New Direction

The marketplace for nonfungible tokens (NFTs), OpenSea terminated employees on November 3.

Co-founder and chief executive officer Devin Finzer announced on X (previously Twitter) that the organization would be introducing OpenSea 2.0 with a reduced workforce.

At the time of OpenSea’s introduction in 2017, NFTs were a novel concept. It operates similarly to Etsy and eBay and accepts Ether as payment.

It reduced its workforce by 20% in July 2022, citing the crypto winter, according to press reports at the time. The company had 230 employees at the time.

The spokesperson further stated that approximately fifty percent of personnel across all functions would be impacted, with a specific emphasis on the reduction in middle managers.

In addition to accelerated equity vesting and four-month severance compensation, the employees would be provided with six months of ongoing healthcare and mental health services.

In 2021, the collectible NFT market reached its zenith. After that period, applications such as tokenizing legal documents, assets, and identities have grown in prominence, in contrast to the decline in the value of numerous collectibles.

In August, OpenSea encountered substantial opposition from the community following its announcement that it would discontinue the operator filter.

This feature enabled creators to blacklist marketplaces that failed to enforce royalties. In response, Yuga Labs, the developer of the wildly successful Bored Ape Yacht Club and CryptoPunks NFT series, commenced reducing its utilization of the Seaport Marketplace smart contract from OpenSea.

Finzer stated in an X post, “As we rebuild, we will continue to support our existing products and iteratively test OpenSea 2.0 in public.”

Presently, twelve open positions with starting salaries ranging from $90,000 to $270,000 are listed on LinkedIn by the organization.