Vancouver-based Dapper Labs has carried out more layoffs, marking the Web3 company’s third round of cuts in the past eight months as it navigates the market downturn.
Dapper Labs founder and CEO Roham Gharegozlou shared the news via Twitter, disclosing that on July 12 the firm let go of as many as 51 employees, including full-time staff and contractors. The CEO did not disclose what percentage of Dapper Labs’ team was affected.
Dapper Labs’ latest layoffs come as it contends with a broader crypto and Web3 winter that has seen the demand for and value of NFTs drop.
“This decision was incredibly difficult because of the amazing people affected but it is necessary and the right thing to do to ensure a lean and efficient Dapper Labs,” Gharegozlou wrote.
Dapper Labs’ latest layoffs come as the firm contends with a broader cryptocurrency and Web3 winter that has seen the demand for and value of the non-fungible tokens (NFTs) it develops drop as the market has shrunk. Amid these conditions, Dapper Labs also faces a class-action lawsuit claiming its NBA Top Shot NFTs constitute unregistered securities.
For Dapper Labs, these latest cuts represent its third official round of layoffs since November, when BetaKit reported that the company reduced its headcount by 22 percent as part of what it described as a broader refocus of strategy and reorganization of teams. This February, Dapper Labs laid off another 20 percent of its employees. As BetaKit previously reported, Dapper Labs also quietly shed a number of other employees last year in what it called “performance-related” cuts.
Based on the employee figures on Dapper Labs’ LinkedIn page, the firm’s headcount has dropped 43 percent over the past year, to 361 staff at the time of publication.
Founded in 2018, Dapper Labs is the company behind the Flow blockchain and a variety of popular NFT collectible projects, from CryptoKitties to NBA Top Shot. To date, the Canadian Web3 firm has raised hundreds of millions of dollars from a group of investors that includes Andreessen Horowitz, Google Ventures, Coatue, and Version One Ventures, reaching a reported valuation of $7.6 billion in 2021 during the NFT boom.
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But market conditions have deteriorated since then, and Dapper Labs has joined a growing list of other tech, crypto, and Web3 companies to shed staff.
Speaking to the firm’s latest round of cuts, Gharegozlou wrote, “With this restructure, we have made the business more lean, which is going to let us do the right thing for our fans and grow our communities in the most healthy ways possible.”
Despite the repeat layoffs, the CEO claimed that both Dapper Labs and the Flow blockchain network remain “well capitalized.” In the case of the latter, Gharegozlou said Flow is funded with a separate pool of capital from Dapper Labs, and has “several years of cash runway with no need to sell tokens to fund short-term operations.”
Feature image courtesy Dapper Labs via Glassdoor.
