Mahi Sall, Advisor, Fintech-Bank Partnerships, Payments and Financial Inclusivity
January 25th, 2023
Mahi Sall is the CEO & Founder of FinXpair, a Berlin-based strategic advisory boutique firm focu[...]
OpenSea Laysoff 20% of its Staff
ArtNews | Shanti Escalante-De Mattei | Jul 14, 2022
Devin Finzer, the CEO of OpenSea, announced Thursday on Twitter that the NFT marketplace laying off 20 percent of its employees.
We made the incredibly sad and difficult decision to reduce the size of our team. Today we are going to say goodbye to many of our friends and team members across OpenSea. 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 current volume) and give us high confidence that we’ll only have to go through this process once.
Prior to the layoff, OpenSea had around 275 employees. After the layoff of just over 40 employees, they remain with 230.
See: ‘Fearless Girl’ creator sells NFTs to cover $3M legal fees
In January, OpenSea announced a valuation of $13 billion following a successful round of series C funding totaling $300 million. At that time, the company was operating with 90 employees. After the funding came in, Finzer said at the time that he planned to use the money to “grow the team” of customer service employees from 60 to 120, to help quality of responses to customer support requests from their users. The marketplace has been plagued with technical difficulties and plagiarism complaints, along with a steady drip of hacks and scams, which has led to legal trouble.
Finzer, and co-founder Alex Atallah were recently named NFT’s first billionares, each valued at $2.2 billion, according to Forbes.
Read: NFT Marketplace exploit leads to catastrophic losses for some collectors
Some of the trouble users faced came from internal issues. A former OpenSea employee, Nate Chastain, was arrested in early June in connection with an alleged insider trading scheme while at the marketplace, a first. A decision to limit the amount of NFTs one could create in a day temporarily caused mayhem on the site before executives backtracked their decision and Iranian OpenSea users were unceremoniously kicked off the platform after the company said it had to comply with US sanctions against Iran.
Continue to the full article --> here
The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
 |  |  |
Support NCFA by Following us on Twitter!Follow @NCFACanada  |
Related Posts
Fast Developing Industries: Keeping Up with the Latest Trends
What the BitMEX Decision Means for Crypto Exchanges Operating in the United States
The Bitcoin Family: Still on the Road—After Three Years!
Global Crowdfunding with Dr. Richard Swart, UC Berkeley, Director of Crowdfunding Research 
SEC chair: perhaps all stocks could become blockchain tokens
How Location-Based Data Can Benefit Fintech
Leave a Reply