OpenSea CEO Devin Finzer told the NFT marketplace's staff on July 14, 2022, that the company was letting go of roughly 20 percent of its team. “Today is a hard day for OpenSea, as we're letting go of ~20% of our team,” Finzer wrote on X, posting the note he had shared with employees that morning1. CoinDesk reported the cuts on July 14, 20222.
Two leadership moves at OpenSea on the record since 2022
Every move CryptoLately has verified there, by the day it became public
Moves: The Moves Ledger, CryptoLately's record of verified leadership moves, Oct. 3, 2016 to Oct. 2, 2026.
Read the chart as a table
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| July 1, 2022 | Atallah left as Co-Founder. Alex Atallah left as Co-Founder of OpenSea |
| July 14, 2022 | Layoffs. Layoffs at OpenSea became public |
11 rounds of layoffs on the record in 2022
Rounds of layoffs CryptoLately has verified, by year; 2026 through Oct. 2, 2026
- 2022: 11
- 2019, 2020, 2021, 2023, 2024, 2025, 2026
Moves: The Moves Ledger, CryptoLately's record of verified leadership moves, Oct. 3, 2016 to Oct. 2, 2026.
Read the chart as a table
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| 2019 | 2 |
| 2020 | 0 |
| 2021 | 0 |
| 2022 | 11 |
| 2023 | 12 |
| 2024 | 6 |
| 2025 | 5 |
| 2026 | 18 |
The move
Finzer's note named the pressure behind the decision. “The reality is that we have entered an unprecedented combination of crypto winter and broad macroeconomic instability, and we need to prepare the company for the possibility of a prolonged downturn,” he wrote, in the passage CoinDesk quoted from his note to staff2. He framed the cuts as protection against a long stretch of weak trading rather than a short one. CoinDesk reported that Finzer said the layoffs put OpenSea in position to weather five years of depressed trading volume. He said it would take only this one round.
Finzer paired the warning with a claim about OpenSea's position afterward. “With the hard (but important) changes we made today, we're in an even better position to capture what will soon become the largest market on the planet,” he wrote, in the line CoinDesk quoted2. CoinDesk noted on July 14, 2022, that Gemini, Coinbase, Crypto.com and Bullish.com had all announced layoffs recently.
What came next
The five-year runway Finzer described lasted sixteen months. CryptoSlate reported on Nov. 4, 2023, that OpenSea had cut about 50 percent of its remaining staff. Finzer had announced the round in a series of posts on Nov. 3, 2023, alongside plans for a rebuilt platform the company called "OpenSea 2.0"3. CryptoSlate named the July 2022 cuts as the prior round, writing that “OpenSea previously laid off about 20% of its staff in July 2022”.
Finzer's own account of the second round pointed to a different problem than the market alone. CryptoSlate quoted him saying OpenSea had heard it was seen as "a follower, not a leader," and that the company wanted to "move with speed, quality, and conviction to make more meaningful bets"3. A company spokesperson told media outlets that the laid-off employees would receive four months of pay, six months of health and mental health coverage, and accelerated equity vesting, according to CryptoSlate's report.
Sources
- Devin Finzer, post on OpenSea staff cuts, X, July 14, 2022, https://x.com/dfinzer/status/1547648521607659522
- Nelson Wang, "OpenSea Lays Off Roughly 20% of Its Staff," CoinDesk, July 14, 2022, https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/07/14/opensea-lays-off-roughly-20-of-its-staff
- Assad Jafri, "OpenSea slashes 50% of its workforce in preparation for 2.0," CryptoSlate, Nov. 4, 2023, https://cryptoslate.com/opensea-slashes-50-of-its-workforce-in-preparation-for-2-0/