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Crypto layoffs have continued into November.

The industry faces not only an ongoing bear market marked by depressed digital asset prices, but also a tough macroeconomic environment where inflation and a series of U.S. interest rate hikes have intensified fears of a recession.  

Coinbase, which recently restructured its product team and laid off staff earlier this year, is one company worried that conditions might worsen.

“For 2023, we’re preparing with a conservative bias and assuming that the current macroeconomic headwinds will persist and possibly intensify,” the company wrote in its third-quarter shareholder letter.

Here are the most high-profile crypto industry layoffs The Block reported between Oct. 5 and Nov. 5. Among the deepest cuts reported came from Dapper Labs (22% of staff) and Stripe (14%).

Oct. 11: Market maker GSR cuts staff to focus on long-term growth 

GSR made layoffs equal to less than 10% of its staff in the third quarter. The market maker and liquidity provider made the cuts to focus on long-term growth, a GSR spokesperson said, adding that the company currently employs 300 people.  

Back in July 2021, GSR co-founder Rich Rosenblum said during The Scoop podcast that the company had plans to grow its staff from 25 to more than 200 in a year’s time.

Nov. 1: Galaxy Digital could cut 20% of workforce  

New York City-based Galaxy Digital has been eyeing staff cuts of 10-15%, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter. As many as 75 people could be affected.

Separately, Axios reported in late September that Galaxy Digital’s co-head of trading Robert Bogucki would be leaving the company for a position at investment firm Brevan Howard.

Nov. 1: Digital Currency Group lays off 10 people in restructuring 

Stamford, Connecticut-based Digital Currency Group (DCG) laid off 10 mostly junior employees as it streamlined its departments, the company confirmed to The Block following a report from Bloomberg.

DCG’s Mark Murphy moved from the position of chief operating officer to president. The parent of companies including Grayscale, Genesis and CoinDesk made a “series of internal changes” to position the company for its next growth phase, a spokesperson said.

DCG’s Genesis started making staff cuts in August that affected 20% of its 260-person staff, Wall Street Journal reported.

Nov. 1: Crypto exchange Bitmex cuts staff  

Crypto exchange Bitmex cut an unspecified amount of staff as it refocused its business away from activities like spot trading, custody and brokerage services, The Block exclusively reported.

A spokesperson had originally said the cuts impacted 30% of the company’s workforce but later walked back the number and said a smaller number of people were impacted. The exact amount is unknown.

Bitmex CEO Alexander Höptner left the exchange after fewer than two years there, The Block reported on Oct. 25.

Nov. 2: Dapper Labs lays off 22% of staff

CryptoKitties creator Dapper Labs laid off 22% of its staff. Senior Vice President of Marketing Dave Feldman confirmed on Twitter the company would be laying off staff, and CEO Roham Gharegozlou confirmed the size of the layoffs in a company letter posted to Dapper Labs’ website.

“As part of a broader refocus of our strategy and reorganization of our teams to better serve our communities, we have made the difficult decision to reduce our team size by 22%,” Gharegozlou said in the letter. 

The layoffs come as the NFT market remains depressed. Ethereum-based NFT volumes decreased 25% in October from the previous month, CryptoSlam data visualized by The Block showed.

Nov. 3: Stripe says goodbye to about 14% of staff  

Payment company Stripe laid off about 14% of its staff. In an email to employees, Founders Patrick and John Collison mentioned macroeconomic challenges and limited startup funding as reasons for the cuts.

Stripe will go back to its February staffing levels of nearly 7,000 people, the company’s founders said.

“Around 14% of people at Stripe will be leaving the company,” the employee letter states. “We, the founders, made this decision. We over hired for the world we’re in (more on that below), and it pains us to be unable to deliver the experience that we hoped that those impacted would have at Stripe.”

Nov. 4: Mythical Games cuts 10% of workforce 

Unicorn gaming company Mythical Games laid off about 10% of its employees due to a company restructuring. Like other companies, the startup cited the economic downturn as a reason for the cuts.

Mythical Games focuses on web3 gaming. It became a unicorn with a $1.25 billion valuation in Nov. 2021 after raising $150 million in a Series C round led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z).

Tech companies dealing with thousands of layoffs  

Meanwhile, many large tech companies have also announced significant cuts in recent weeks that affect thousands of employees. The most high-profile of these cuts is at Twitter, where new owner Elon Musk has started laying off about 3,700 employees according to the New York Times.

Lyft will cut nearly 13% of employees, or close to 700 people, CNN Business reported. Executives cited recession fears and the effects of inflation as reasons for the cuts.

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Solana has faced and overcome a lot of challenges over the past year, said Solana Labs CEO Anatoly Yakovenko, as it remains on its path to providing a fast, scalable blockchain.

Yakovenko discussed how the blockchain has struggled with maintaining uptime, particularly in June, but new developments should avoid this in the future. He then broke down the blockchain’s four biggest problems moving forward; if it’s able to solve these, then it will achieve the blockchain’s ultimate goal.

“We want to synchronize the world at the speed of light,” Yakovenko said on stage at Breakpoint, Lisbon, in an interview with Austin Federa, head of communications at Solana Foundation.

In June, block times fell to one second between blocks on average, he said. While this seems fast — and is faster than blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum — it’s slow for Solana’s typical performance. This was due to the network going down on occasion as it struggled with spam on the network.

Yakovenko said having a second client implementation of the Solana blockchain — with a different code base — should help prevent issues on the network. “The probability of the same kind of bug incurring in both is probably zero,” he said.

The Solana Labs CEO highlighted the difficulty of fees on the network. Solana offers low transaction fees, which can lead to plenty of spam. He said that a few projects have helped to avoid these issues, such as Quick, which limits bots from sending 100 gigabytes of spam to the network.

The next big challenges

Solana faces three hard challenges going ahead, Yakovenko highlighted. First, there’s formal verification, which refers to the security guarantees on the network. Second, there’s type-rich bytecode, which refers to how different parts of the network talk to each other. Third, there’s dynamic pricing for storage, a way for validators to manage how much the Solana blockchain grows in size.

The biggest challenge going ahead, Yakovenko added, is how to have multiple block producers operate at the same time. If this can be solved, it should let the network operate much faster.

Yakovenko said he would also like to see the block production process become separated from the transaction execution process. This should let users of the Solana blockchain know their transaction has been processed more quickly.

The past and the future

Looking back, 21.9 million NFTs have been minted on Solana so far, said Federa. He added that the network has seen $1.1 billion in primary sales of NFTs and $2.5 billion in secondary sales.

So far at Breakpoint, there have been a few announcements. Google Cloud said it intends to support Solana in its data availability platform BigQuery and its Blockchain Node Engine, which is its managed service for running nodes. Development on the Solana phone has kept going, with 3,500 pre-production versions of the upcoming phone set to ship to developers in mid-December. Plus, shoemaker Asics has dropped a Solana-themed shoe.

The development and launch of the Solana phone, called Saga, is taking a lot of blood, sweat and tears, Yakovenko said. He added that it was “a little crazy to take on Apple and Google” in terms of competing with their app stores, but appreciated being able to use Android.

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Traditional financial firms are working their way further into crypto and deeper down the rabbit hole, according to Fireblocks Head of Web3 Omer Amsel.

Fireblocks custodies funds on behalf of more than 1,500 financial institutions and enables them to interact with blockchains and crypto services. These companies, especially the more traditional ones, start with custody services and slowly move into more crypto-native interactions, Amsel said in an interview at Breakpoint, Lisbon.

“We see more and more traditional finance exploring the way into crypto and maybe they’re taking a more timid approach,” Amsel said. He pointed to BNY Mellon’s recent launch of a crypto custody service, which is using Fireblocks behind the scenes. “I think it’s picking up. That’s what I would say. I think it’s a cumulative thing.”

Amsel gave a hypothetical example of a firm that might have started with crypto custody one or two years ago. He said these firms make this first step, see that it is okay and then start to explore the technology more.

“What I’m trying to say is you will see that the volume from those players just keep[s] increasing internally and as an industry and as a whole,” Amsel said.

Running their own validators

Some of these traditional finance firms and banks have started running their own blockchain validators — nodes that keep blockchains running — because their pre-existing infrastructure is suitable for doing so.

These banks have a lot of servers that are designed to have good uptime, meaning that they’re well suited for running validators, Amsel said. The Fireblocks service also allows the companies to custody their tokens with Fireblocks and stake them to their own validators.

“We see that actually some of these more traditional institutions dedicate part of their IT to actually run nodes and validators themselves and then stake some of their own funds to their own validators,” Amsel said. “So I think that’s very interesting. It’s still niche in that sense, but we’re seeing more and more of that.”

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Google Cloud is adding support for the Solana blockchain in BigQuery, in order to make it easier to access Solana data. This comes nine years after it first added Bitcoin to the service.

Support for Solana will go live in Q1 2023, according to Nalin Mittal, web3 lead for Google Cloud, speaking at Breakpoint, Lisbon.

Google Cloud is already running a Solana validator, Mittal said. It is learning more about the blockchain by doing this and working out how to run one in a cost-efficient way.

This experience is helping Google Cloud prepare to add the network to Blockchain Node Engine, its service for offering managed blockchain nodes. This was its first web3 product, Mittal said, noting its launch was when Google Cloud “really deepened our investment in this space.”

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

VC deals were rushed and went ahead without proper due diligence during the last crypto bull market, said Amy Wu, head of ventures and commercial at FTX Ventures.

This marks one of the key differences between the last bull market and the current bear market, Wu added, speaking on a panel on “VC investing in a bear market” at Breakpoint, Lisbon. She said things are better now.

“It’s definitely changed quite a bit since last year. During a bull market there’s a ton of [fear of missing out] I would say and we were talking about how deals were getting done, term sheets were signed within 24 hours and someone would commit and immediately the rest of the round would come together almost without any due diligence,” Wu said. “It was just around the signal of the lead investor a lot of times. That’s not super healthy, I would say.”

She added that a lot of projects weren’t as long-term oriented and had a variety of skillsets and talent. Now that things have slowed down, there’s more due diligence and VCs are checking the accuracy of projects’ claims and doing reference checks on the founders. 

“The founders also have a longer track record of working in the space. That in itself speaks volumes to whether they’re long-term oriented or not, and all that’s healthier,” she said.

A slight trend toward equity

When asked whether they prefer tokens or equity when investing in crypto starts, both Multicoin Capital co-founder Kyle Samani and Sino Capital CEO Matthew Graham noted they had heard investors were favoring equity a bit more in the current market. They both said their funds weren’t following this trend and continue to focus on investing in tokens.

 Samani added that tokens make up about 90% of the value of his investment funds.

Wu said she takes a different approach. With a decade-long background in traditional venture investing, she said she’s more familiar with equity. As a result, her investments focus on equity deals with token warrants.

How long will the bear market last?

Panel moderator Danny Nelson, a reporter at CoinDesk, asked each panelist how long they think the bear market will last.

Wu said that she thinks the market is pretty closely tied to the macro outlook of traditional markets. She estimated that it will be a couple of years before another bull market might take place.

Ethereal Ventures co-founder Min Teo said that she started her career during the last financial crisis and hopes that this crypto bear market won’t last as long. She estimated that crypto might rise out of its trough in early 2024 — adding that there’s lots more left for crypto projects to build.

Graham didn’t give any specific prediction, but said bear markets are the best times to invest in projects. He added that the “serious people are still here. The larpers are gone; they’ll come back later.”

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

As is always the case, it’s been another eventful week in the blockchain and cryptocurrency industry.

Bitmex cut its headcount significantly amid a pivot away from its “beyond derivatives” strategy, while Coinbase’s chief product officer left the company amid a restructuring of the product team. Meanwhile, Hong Kong is examining ways to open the crypto market to retail investors.

Bitmex reduces headcount amid pivot away from ‘beyond derivatives’ strategy

Crypto exchange Bitmex cut its headcount as part of its pivot away from its “beyond derivatives” push into spot trading, brokerage and custody services, The Block reported on Nov. 1.

“We are pivoting from our Beyond Derivatives strategy, and will return much of our focus aiming at providing the crypto derivatives trading experience people will turn to,” a Bitmex spokesperson said in an email. “We are going to refocus on liquidity, latencies and a vibrant derivatives community including BMEX Token trading.”

After initially noting that 30% of the company’s workforce was cut, a spokesperson later clarified that the figure was actually lower.

Hong Kong looks to widen scope of crypto assets

Hong Kong regulators revealed plans to broaden the scope of crypto assets available in the city, The Block reported on Oct. 31, while also examining ways to open the crypto market to retail investors.

“We recognise the increasing acceptance of [virtual assets] as a vehicle for investment allocation by global investors, be they institutional or individual,” said the Financial Services and the Treasury Bureau, in a statement.

Hong Kong plans to make an attempt at turning the city into a global center for the digital asset industry.

Coinbase restructures product team as lead leaves

Coinbase’s chief product officer, Surojit Chatterjee, left the crypto exchange on Oct. 28 as it restructured its product team, The Block reported on Nov. 2.

The product team at the exchange will be reconfigured into four divisions, each led by a separate director reporting to Brian Armstrong, Coinbase’s CEO, who will be more hands-on.

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Art Gobblers, a collection of fully animated ERC721 nonfungible tokens designed by Rick & Morty co-creator Justin Roiland, has seen a significant decline in its floor price.

After numerous sales for upwards of 17 ETH ($27,940) occurred on OpenSea in the days after minting began, the floor price on the NFT marketplace was 6.5 ETH ($10,683), with the best offer of 5.4 ETH ($8,875), as of 9 a.m. ET. On rival NFT marketplace startup Blur, the floor price was 5.90 ETH ($9,697), with recent sales touching as low as 5.01 ETH ($8,234).

The price declines represent a loss of 25% on the day, according to Blur, and almost 36% over the past 24 hours, according to Gem.

Trading of the Paradigm-backed Art Gobblers NFTs has dominated the sector in recent days — with a total volume of 10,441 ETH ($17,159,575) on OpenSea and a seven-day volume of 38,633.85 ETH ($63,493,960) on Blur. Art Gobblers has been most closely associated with the latter marketplace, despite both OpenSea and Blur accompanying the NFT project on crypto VC firm Paradigm’s portfolio.

Art Gobblers has not arrived without its share of criticism from the NFT and crypto community. Some have expressed dissatisfaction with the project hand-picking individuals — who, in turn, chose other individuals — for the initial allowlist spots. Others have claimed that influencers promoted the project without disclosing their alleged arrangements with the Art Gobblers teams. Meanwhile, some have gone so far as to make unsubstantiated claims the recent price action indicates a coordinated pump-and-dump from insiders. Many Art Gobblers proponents, however, say these are baseless allegations.

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Pre-production versions of the Solana phone will be shipped to developers from Dec. 15, as the phone gears up for introduction in early 2023.

Around 3,500 developer-focused kits have been manufactured and are boxed up, according to an update at Breakpoint, Lisbon. The last hurdle is the release software that’s going through final testing. The phones will enable

The phones will let developers in the Solana ecosystem test decentralized applications for the Solana dApp store. They will also let developers try out the Solana Mobile Stack and the Seed Vault, the way the phone stores private keys.

The developer kits will be sent out first to holders of the Saga Pass, a membership NFT given to early adopters of the phone. There’s been one mint of these NFTs and another will be coming soon.

The Solana phone, called Saga, is an Android phone featuring a Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chip, 12 gigabytes of RAM and an OLED display. It will go on sale for $1,000 in Q1 2023.

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

U.S. President Joe Biden referred to Twitter as “an outfit that sends and spews lies all across the world.”

His remarks were made during a fundraiser in Chicago on Friday, Bloomberg reported. Biden also said: “There’s no editors anymore,” and asked: “How do we expect kids to be able to understand what is at stake?”

The president’s comments came shortly after Elon Musk acquired the social media giant — which is the platform of choice for the majority of individuals and projects in the blockchain and cryptocurrency industry — for $44 billion.

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO has already removed most of Twitter’s high-ranking executives and board and is reportedly firing about half of the company’s employees.

Many, from individuals to civil rights groups to the president, have expressed concern about the potential lack of content moderation on a version of Twitter owned by Musk — a self-professed proponent of free speech.

Conversely, a multitude of crypto participants have taken a celebratory stance toward Musk’s acquisition of the popular platform, as his free-speech stance may seem to align with the crypto ethos of censorship resistance.

Recently, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao — who commended a digital asset reports released by the Biden administration in September — said he’d be willing to join Twitter’s board of directors if invited by Musk.

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Distributed ledger technology (DLT) is becoming increasingly mainstream among financial market infrastructures and global market participants, according to Citi’s second Securities Services Evolution whitepaper.

Most of those surveyed, 88%, told Citi that their organizations are either actively participating in or exploring digital assets or DLT. A bigger percentage, 92%, said tokenization benefits market liquidity and tradable-asset variety.

More than half said market infrastructure based on distributed ledger technology could reduce post-trade processing costs by 10% to 30%. Additionally, 79% of respondents said atomic settlement may be achievable in less than 10 years.

“We are seeing a greater sense of momentum and purpose in all developments across the industry, in particular the determination to move to a T+1 settlement cycle,” Okan Pekin, global head of securities services at Citi, said in an email. “Delivering these changes will be no small feat but in due course offer the prospect of very substantial cost savings and efficiencies.”

The whitepaper includes quantitative and qualitative data from 12 financial market infrastructures and almost 300 market participants from banks, broker-dealers, asset managers, custodians and institutional investors.

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.