Magic Eden NFT Marketplace Lays Off 22 Employees

Magic Eden, the top marketplace for Solana non-fungible tokens (NFTs), announced in a letter shared on Twitter that it is laying off 22 employees, citing “company-wide restructuring” as the crypto market as a whole continues to struggle through a severe crypto winter.

In an announcement on February 14, Jack Lu, CEO and co-founder of Magic Eden, said the company has to make changes to its team to meet the new targets in 2023.

🧵 Today is a sad day at Magic Eden.

As part of a company-wide restructuring, we have made the difficult decision to part ways with 22 teammates. Nothing about this decision takes away from the talent, hardwork and dedication of this incredible group of people. pic.twitter.com/2LAGfK9dMV

— Jack Lu (@0xLeoInRio) February 14, 2023

Lu sent his deepest gratitude to the departing staff, each of whom had contributed greatly to Magic Eden over the past year, according to the statement.

He said:

“We are deeply grateful to these folks—each of them has contributed immensely to Magic Eden over the last year. We will be honoring them and their contributions with the utmost care and respect. We were able to speak with each person 1:1 before sharing this news publicly.”

However, each affected employee will receive a severance package to help them find a new job. This severance package includes six months of health care and two months’ salary. Additionally, it offers a year’s subscription to Headspace, a health industry company focused on mental wellness.

In addition, each of the terminated employees is allowed to keep their company-issued laptops. They will also be offered assistance in finding their future jobs, including letters of recommendation, training, and more.

He added:

“This week, we will focus our energy on helping the people who are transitioning from Magic Eden. Next week, we will regroup, refocus, and move forward.”

Surprisingly, in an announcement on the tweet, Austin Virts, director of Aptos Labs, expanded job opportunities for the recently fired Magic Eden staff.

If any of them are looking for roles Aptos is actively hiring talented folks across all positions.

I’m specifically looking for rockstar ecosystem and NFT people.

— Austin 💚 (@austinvirts) February 14, 2023

Crypto Winter Isn’t Slowing Down In Pushing Employees Out

Since early 2023, layoffs have also been announced by Crypto.com, CoinTracker, Luno, Gemini Blockchain.com, and Coinbase, all of which are popular crypto firms. The prolonged crypto winter is still provoking many crypto and NFT projects to shed their staff.

Magic Eden is the latest crypto firm to enter the list with 22 layoffs. According to LinkedIn’s list of 141 employees, that’s about 15%.

Launched on 17 September 2021, Magic Eden is the largest decentralized NFT marketplace built on the Solana blockchain. It allows traders to buy, sell, and mint Solana and Ethereum-based NFTs.

The layoffs are painful, of course, but Lu said he would continue to strive for improvement in the future.

The letter stated:

Since then, our business has grown significantly and the nature of our challenges has evolved. Our focus areas for 2023 include growing traction across chains, developing services for NFT creators, and exploring new use cases like rewards and social experiences. As we established these priorities for the year, we had to take a hard look at what structure and roles are needed.