Sky Mavis, Creator of Web3 Sport Axie Infinity, Cuts One-Fifth of Its Workers

Sky Mavis, the web3 gaming agency behind Axie Infinity, laid off 21% of its workforce final week.

The web3 agency’s co-founder and CEO Trung Nguyen stated on X on Saturday that the layoffs weren’t associated to the corporate’s funds or monetary well being.

“As a substitute, it’s a strategic transfer that permits for a sharper focus and positioning Sky Mavis for hypergrowth in 2025 and past,” he stated.

In accordance with Nguyen, the transfer got here regardless of the 12 months being “considered one of beneficial progress and evolution”. Going ahead the corporate will concentrate on its core merchandise moderately than making an attempt to construct merchandise for all customers, he stated. The web3 creator will focus on its Ronin Pockets and Waypoint, Mavis Market, Axie Infinity, Web3 sport publishing, and increasing the Ronin Community for extra builders. It is usually engaged on a brand new Axie sport.

In 2023, co-founder Aleksander Larsen stated in an interview with Finoverse that the corporate had 250 staff at its major base in Singapore and throughout its subsidiaries in Vietnam, the U.S. and Norway. Sky Mavis didn’t instantly reply to CoinDesk’s request for complete headcount or the variety of folks impacted.

Regardless of bitcoin hitting new all time highs over the previous few weeks and the prospect of a extra succinct regulatory regime for crypto within the U.S. following the re-election of Donald Trump, a number of crypto firms have introduced layoffs over the previous month. Cryptocurrency alternate Kraken laid off 400 folks, or 30% of its employees, on Oct. 31, in accordance with tech layoff tracker Layoffs.fyi.

DYDX additionally minimize 25% of its employees on the finish of final month, and Consensys laid off an additional 20%, or 162 folks. Cuts have additionally taken place this 12 months at Matter Labs, PolygonFireblocks, Sorare, Moonpay, Paxos and a number of other different firms.