- Opensea CEO Devin Finzer said the company made the decision as it was creating a new foundation for OpenSea 2.0.
- 95% of NFTs have no value at all, according to a recent report on the state of NFTs.
Popular non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace OpenSea has decided to lay off half of its staff, co-founder and CEO Devin Finzer announced on X.
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We are laying a new foundation so that we can innovate faster and we will soon be able to share some experiences with you. We will change the way we work – we will move to a smaller team with a direct connection to users.That’s why today we say goodbye to a number of OpenSea teammates.
— Devin Finzer (dfinzer.eth) (@dfinzer) November 3, 2023
Finzer said the company was creating a new foundation for OpenSea 2.0, which led to the decision to lay off its employees. He added,
“We also heard your feedback loud and clear: sometimes OpenSea feels like a follower, not a leader. And that is not who we want to be.”
The affected employees will receive, among other things, a severance payment of four months. The new organization will be flatter, with fewer middle managers.
OpenSea had previously laid off 20% of its staff in July 2022, citing the crypto winter.
During the NFT market boom in 2021 and 2022, OpenSea was the largest NFT marketplace. In August 2021, there was a monthly trading volume of $2.8 billion.
However, the NFT market started to lose steam in mid-2022, alongside falling cryptocurrency prices.
Following the lead of other NFT marketplaces, OpenSea also considered eliminating creator royalties. But the directive failed because a large number of artists protested against the measure.
NFT market is slumping
DappGambl recently published a report on the state of NFTs in September. The report shows that as many as 95% of NFTs (owned by more than 23 million investors) have no value at all.
Source: DappGambl
High value NFT assets are very rare. Less than 1% of NFTs have a price tag of more than $6,000.
79% of all NFT collections remain unsold.
NFTs once captured the collective imagination worldwide with multiple news reports of multi-million dollar deals for the sale of certain NFT collectibles. People were excited about this asset class. But the situation is now grim.
The report adds:
“This highlights the incredibly risky nature of the NFT market and underlines the need for careful due diligence before making purchases, especially if they are of high value.”