Protocol Labs CEO Juan Benet published a blog post on Friday announcing that 21% of the company’s staff would be laid off. Protocol Labs is the creator of the Filecoin blockchain network. Benet pointed out in the blog post that this is an “extremely difficult economic downturn, worldwide, and in particular in the crypto industry.”
Protocol Labs Cuts Jobs in Response to Macro Winter and Crypto Market Decline
Protocol Labs, the company behind the Filecoin file storage blockchain network, announced on February 3 that it would lay off a number of employees. CEO Juan Benet wrote a blog post, titled “Focusing Our Strategy to Weather Crypto Winter,” to explain the layoffs. He cited the “extremely difficult economic downturn” as hitting the crypto industry particularly hard. “The macro winter has worsened the crypto winter, making it more extreme and potentially longer than our industry anticipated,” Benet wrote.
“Although we have worked extremely hard to avoid this, we have made the difficult decision to reduce our workforce by 89 positions (approximately 21%),” the blog post details. “This is impacting individuals on PLGO teams (PL Corp, PL Member Services, Network Goods, PL Outercore and PL Starfleet). We had to focus our workforce on the most important and business-critical efforts. »
Protocol Labs has joined the list of companies in the crypto industry that have laid off employees during the “crypto winter”. Other cryptocurrency and blockchain-focused companies, such as Candy Digital, Blockchain.com, Opensea, Huobi, and Gemini, have also cut staff. Industry-wide layoffs began to gather momentum last year and have continued through 2023. In his Friday blog post, Benet noted that the “changes will be difficult for all the Labbers” and that the company will host a “PLGO All Hands” meeting on Monday to answer any remaining questions.
Filecoin’s native cryptocurrency, FIL, is currently ranked #35 in the crypto economy based on market capitalization. As of Saturday, February 4, 2023, the filecoin (FIL) market valuation was approximately $2.11 billion, with a global trading volume of approximately $136 million in the last 24 hours. FIL gained 65.7% against the US dollar in the last 30 days and outperformed major cryptocurrencies like bitcoin (BTC) and ethereum (ETH). Despite the 65.7% increase, FIL is still down more than 97% from its all-time high of $236 per coin, which was reached on April 1, 2021. As of 3:30 p.m. Est, on February 4, 2023, FIL was trading at $5.59 per unit.
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