SuperRare Slashes 30% Workforce Amid Crypto Winter

SuperRare, a digital art marketplace on Ethereum, has announced a 30% reduction in workforce as CEO John Crain said the company unintentionally hired too many people in the last boom phase.

Crain tweeted on January 7, informing that he had “some tough news to share” and included a screenshot informing SuperRare’s team of the layoff.

The CEO added, 

“In recent months it’s become clear that this aggressive growth was unsustainable: we over-hired, and I take full ownership of this mistake.”

He said that “startups are a balancing act of managing rapid growth while doing everything possible to conserve limited resources. During the recent bull run, we grew in tandem with the market.” 

The particular redundancy compensation that the fired employees will receive weren’t specified by Crain, although the company will “do everything we can to help them transition to new opportunities and support them in future endeavors.”

Additionally, Crain noted that SuperRare is still committed to pursuing its original objective of expanding access and exposure to digital artists, despite a deceleration in business during the crypto bear market. 

He states: 

“We are facing headwinds, yes — but there remains an incredible uncaptured opportunity as we continue building something totally new: a global digital art renaissance that is transparent, fair and that anyone can access from anywhere in the world.”

SuperRare’s Witnesses Decline in Volume

SuperRare’s strategy is more oriented to art, the artist community, and limited-edition NFT artworks than the popular machine avatar model on OpenSea and Magic Eden, which bears untold numbers of tokens in a single collection. 

This may have resulted in its noticeably lower trading volume than other NFT exchanges like OpenSea and Magic Eden. DappRadar reports that SuperRare managed $663,000 in trading volume over the last 30 days, compared to Magic Eden’s $80.1 million and OpenSea’s $307 million. 

It was reported on Jan. 5 that cryptocurrency lender Genesis fired 30% of its employees, and on Jan. 6 the allegedly ailing cryptocurrency exchange Huobi also disclosed a 20% reduction.