CEO Marc Boiron announced on Thursday that Polygon Labs, the group working on developing the layer-2 blockchain Polygon, has let go of 60 workers, or around 19% of its workforce.
One of the largest layer-2 blockchains devoted to Ethereum scaling is the Polygon chain. According to its website, it has facilitated over 2.44 billion transactions, implemented over 1.17 million smart contracts, and generated a sales volume of $12.8 billion. The organization that assists in expanding the blockchain’s ecosystem is called Polygon Labs.
Boiron claimed that the team’s expansion during the last cryptocurrency bull market “diluted” the attributes it was looking for in hires.
“We need to establish an effective surgical team with a lot less red tape in order to move as ambitiously and nimbly as possible, where everyone can take ownership of what they’re doing,” he continued. “We can work together more, finish challenging projects faster, and perform to the best of our abilities as a smaller team.”
Following the layoffs, Polygon Labs is “eliminating traditional geo-pay models” and increasing the overall remuneration of its current employees by 15%. Those who are laid off will get health insurance through the end of the month, if applicable, and two months of severance pay.
Following the news, MATIC, Polygon’s token, dropped, although CoinMarketCap data indicates that it has subsequently recovered to about the same levels for the day.
Over 1,000 employees, or 10% of the workforce, allegedly lost their jobs earlier this week at Block, the fintech company that Jack Dorsey founded and is the source of Square, Cash App, and Afterpay.
The statistics from last year indicated that a few cryptocurrency companies saw layoffs in the fourth quarter, including Ava Labs, OpenSea, Yuga Labs, and Chainalysis. The largest was OpenSea, which laid off 50% of its employees in early November.
Within the IT industry, significant layoffs have occurred in both large and small organizations. According to statistics from Layoffs.fyi, 107 IT businesses laid off about 30,000 people in 2024.
Even though the four-month period is just one month old, more IT personnel have already been let go this quarter than in the two previous quarters combined.
