Solana NFT Protocol Metaplex Announces Layoffs Following the Collapse of FTX

Posted on the 18 November 2022 by Nftnewspro

Metaplex had no financial exposure to the defunct exchange, but it looks to be suffering from the brand harm that has spread to Solana.

Thursday, Solana NFT protocol developer Metaplex revealed a company-wide wave of layoffs, as the infection caused by the collapse of crypto exchange FTX last week continues to spread across the Web3 community.

Stephen Hess, co-founder and chief executive officer of Metaplex, tweeted yesterdat that an unspecified number of people were laid off owing to deteriorating market conditions for crypto in general and for Solana in particular.

“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.

(1/7) Today we made the difficult decision to part ways with several members of the Metaplex Studios team.

— stephen.sol (@meta_hess) November 17, 2022

Metaplex is the protocol that makes NFTs work on Solana. Solana has become a popular alternative to Ethereum as an NFT network. The company had a good start to the year. In January, it raised $46 million from investors like Multicoin Capital, Jump Crypto, and NBA great Michael Jordan.

A few months later, when the bear market was at its worst, the company released a native governance token called MPLX. As soon as it came out in September, the value of MPLX dropped sharply. People aren’t as excited about the Solana NFT space as they were a few weeks ago, and sales of Solana NFTs dropped sharply in October. This may be because of debates about creator royalties.

Then, last week, FTX fell apart, taking with it all assets and projects related to Solana, which was FTX founder Sam Bankman-favorite Fried’s network.

In the days after FTX went down, the value of SOL dropped a shocking 60%, which was three times as much as Bitcoin and Ethereum. Even though the Solana Foundation, which is in charge of maintaining the Solana network, lost tens of millions of dollars in investments related to FTX, it seems that Bankman-close Fried’s ties to the network have had the most effect on the Solana ecosystem.

Bankman-Fried has shown his strong support for the network in public for years, and he has also built important Solana-based projects, such as Project Serum, a decentralized exchange.

Also, FTX built a Solana-centered NFT platform where many of these collectibles are now stuck and can’t be accessed while the exchange is going through bankruptcy.

The layoffs at Metaplex, which were announced late Thursday, are just one more example of the many, still-unknown effects of FTX’s collapse. Even if you don’t have any direct financial ties to the exchange, the damage to FTX and its founder’s reputation seems to be wreaking havoc in parts of the crypto industry that seem to be safe.

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