06/11/2023 NFT Marketplace OpenSea Cuts Staff

The NFT platform, used to trade Bored Apes and Pudgy Penguins, laid off 50% of its employees as digital art collectibles' floor prices continue to fall.

OpenSea faces clouds. (Jonny Clow/Unsplash)

OpenSea faces clouds. (Jonny Clow/Unsplash)

Non-fungible token (NFT) platform OpenSea has pared back its operating staff as digital art collectibles remain in the doldrums, the company's CEO Devin FinzertweetedFriday.

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The sweeping layoffs may have affected as much as 50% of OpenSea's staff, crypto news outlet Decryptreportedearlier Friday.

The job cuts come as the company prepares to launch a revamped marketplace christened OpenSea 2.0, at a time when NFT prices continue to fall. The platform can be used to trade and collect NFT collections includingBored ApesandPudgy Penguins.

"We’re building a new foundation so we can innovate faster and we’ll have some experiences to share with you soon," Finzer said in a post on X (formerly Twitter). "We will change how we operate - shifting to a smaller team with a direct connection to users."

OpenSea previously laid off roughly 20% of its staff in July 2022, leaving it with a workforce of 230 employees, The Informationreported.

It is unclear how many people the company employed immediately before this latest round of layoffs.

Nor is it immediately clear how OpenSea 2.0 will differ from its predecessor. Finzer didn't share details about the platform's planned product offerings or a timeline for its rollout.

OpenSea didn't immediately respond to CoinDesk's request for comment.

According to a Nansen report, prominent NFTs from well known or “blue-chip” collections saw their floor pricesdrop by more than 25% in August.An NFT's floor price is thelowest price at which a digital art piecefrom a particular collection, or drop, can be sold.

Meanwhile, NFT prices have fallen more broadly as well, with the Nansen NFT-500index dropping 55% during the year-to-date.

Arts

https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2023/11/03/nft-marketplace-opensea-cuts-staff/

Interesting NFTs
Magnificent
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hairy by Steve Aoki x Antoni Tudisco. Comes with Infinite Objects screen!
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The eye of providence blinks. Originally posted to tumblr June 26, 2012.
Rare Persian
Sup playa! I'm Rare Persian. My friends describe me as hairy and prickly. I once dreamed of being a Mad Scientist. Now I can be found sleeping in fresh laundry all day. It's pawesome to meet you!
The Scion
A young figure caught in a moment of distraction, aware only ephemerally of his unconscious being, as it engages in psychological and psychedelic layer spaces. His right arm casually cradles a moray eel; the figure is comfortable but not truly aware of the potentials for danger in such negligence. His shirt reads “Bello” in Pokemon style font, harkening back to a childhood straddling the millennial threshold. To his right side, out of the unconscious deep, shrouded alien heads propagate as a fractal totem, each new iteration a more sophisticated rendering of emotional masking over the cold mystery of the greys. As the scion of the Budgie-Sattva, the young man, in his distraction, is also simultaneously aware of higher levels of self discovery. To his left a psychological topology sets beneath the oracle side of an 8 ball ,hovering; its message a purest concept of acceptance. The “Scion” lettering is in 80’s HeMan style bold declaration. The lower right side of the painting is like a hybrid of melon, feathers, and seeds. The crystals in the background bring light; conducted, refracted, reflected, and dispersed, to balance the dark shadow of the figure’s physical body. The aura of the scion succeeds in layers to point, with a finger, and the crown chakra, toward a center of a mandala existing as nigh pure application of strokes, in essence painterly abstraction, but also revealing hints of the Aura of migraine, and the bi-hemispherical nature of the brain–noting concerns of the possibility of inherited mental disease. Yet the flourish of chakra as it sets against that center is robust, active, coherent, and reveling against all fear. Fundamentally, the piece speaks to the activation of one’s potential to begin to “Know Thyself”, and find greater awareness out of the enigmas of the mind–as an inculcated seed given to the rich soil of one’s own birthright.