On Friday, SuperRare Labs, the firm that launched the NFT marketplace named SuperRare, became the latest crypto firm to reduce its workforce.
It announced that it would lay off 30% of its staff. John Crain, the chief executive of SuperRare, made the announcement. He tweeted the same message that was sent to workers in Slack.
The layoff
The CEO explained that over-hiring and aggressive growth were the reasons behind the company’s decision to reduce its workforce and he also took full responsibility for the mistakes they had made.
He said that in order to fix their errors, they had had to come to the difficult decision of laying off their staff.
He stated that this would help ensure that SuperRare Labs can continue to serve its community of collectors, artists and curators and also remain the leading destination for the world’s best cryptoart.
SuperRare was introduced in 2018 and functions as a social network for art collectors and creators of NFTs (non-fungible tokens) based on the Ethereum blockchain.
These blockchain-based tokens are connected to physical and digital content and function as proof of authenticity, ownership as well as membership in a group.
SuperRare
Since SuperRare was introduced, a number of big names in the world of entertainment and sports have taken advantage of the platform for their digital art projects.
It conducted a Series A funding round in March 2021 in which it was able to raise a sum of $9 million. The round was led by 1confirmation, the crypto fund, and Velvet Sea Ventures.
Other participants in the funding round include SamsungNext, Sound Ventures of Ashton Kutcher and Mark Cuban.
In November of the same year, NFT collector and hip-hop artist Snoop Dogg collaborated with Coldie, the mixed media artist, to introduce an NFT collection on the platform during Miami Art Week.
Madonna, the music icon, had also entered into a partnership with Beeple, the digital artist, in May last year for launching an NFT collection on the SuperRare platform.
The CEO
According to Crain, the company would assist those being laid off in finding new opportunities. Even though the news of the layoffs may not be a good sign for the firm, the CEO sounded quite optimistic.
In his note to employees, Crain said that there was a lot of transformation and innovation to come for digital art and Web3.
He said that they were facing headwinds, but there were still numerous opportunities that could be used for building a global digital art renaissance, which could be accessible everywhere and be fair and transparent.
The layoff announcement from SuperRare is not the first one to come in 2023, as the start of the year saw a number of crypto firms make similar announcements.
This is due to the ongoing crypto winter as well as the contagion from the collapse of several big names last year, such as Terra, Three Arrows Capital (3AC), and FTX.
Crypto exchange Huobi is reducing 20% of its workforce, crypto lending firm Genesis is laying off 30% of its staff and 40% of Silvergate Capital’s workforce will be laid off.
