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Solana NFT Protocol Metaplex Announces Layoffs in Wake of FTX Collapse

Cointime Official

Solana NFT protocol maker Metaplex announced on Thursday that it has undergone a company-wide round of layoffs, as the contagion induced by crypto exchange FTX’s collapse last week continues to spread across the Web3 ecosystem.

An undisclosed number of Metaplex employees were pink-slipped today due to worsening market conditions for crypto generally, and for Solana particularly, the company’s co-founder and CEO Stephen Hess announced today in a tweet.

“While our treasury wasn’t directly impacted by the collapse of FTX and our fundamentals remain strong, the indirect impact on the market is significant and requires that we take a more conservative approach moving forward,” Hess wrote.

Today we made the difficult decision to part ways with several members of the Metaplex Studios team.

Since Metaplex is the base layer of the Solana NFT ecosystem, it’s our core responsibility to ensure the long term sustainability of the protocol for the benefit of the community.

While our treasury wasn’t directly impacted by the collapse of FTX and our fundamentals remain strong, the indirect impact on the market is significant and requires that we take a more conservative approach moving forward.

We are deeply grateful for the contributions of everyone impacted by this change, and it will be my top priority to help these former team members quickly find new roles in the ecosystem, while pushing ahead on critical path work.

These former team members are truly exceptional, which made this decision even more challenging. If you see “Metaplex Studios” on a resume, I highly encourage you to give this person your consideration.

Moving forward, we will be re-focusing our efforts on a few key initiatives: Royalty Enforcement, Creator Studio, Fusion, Compression and continued improvement of dev tools and SDKs.

Through the ups and downs, we are committed to advancing our mission of empowering creators and grateful every day for the opportunity to continue serving the Solana community as we move ahead.

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