NFT Marketplace OpenSea Slashes 20% Jobs Amid Slump In Digital Assets

OpenSea, a non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace, announced on Thursday that it had eliminated 20% of its personnel in order to save money in the face of a protracted downturn in the market for digital assets, as reported by NDTV.

As a result of the emergence of new, wealthy crypto-speculators brought about by the surge of cryptocurrencies, OpenSea, the largest NFT marketplace in the world, had spectacular sales growth in 2021.

However, the developing NFT sector has suffered recently as bitcoin values have fallen and investors have become risk-averse due to high inflation, central bank rate hikes, and worries of a recession.

Devin Finzer, the business’s chief executive, said in a message on Twitter that “the reality is that we have entered an unprecedented mix of a crypto winter and wider macroeconomic volatility, and we need to prepare the company for the likelihood of a prolonged slump.”

In June, OpenSea’s NFT sales volume on the Ethereum blockchain fell to $700 million, down from $2.6 billion in May and a long way from the record of nearly $5 billion in January.
NFTs are assets built on the blockchain that reflect ownership of digital data like text and image files.

According to Finzer, the employment losses would enable the business to maintain five years of growth at the current volume under a variety of possible downturn scenarios.

Approximately 1,100 positions, or 18% of its employees, would be lost, the bitcoin exchange Coinbase announced last month.