[NEWS] OpenSea cuts employees, launches "OpenSea 2.0"

OpenSea, a major NFT marketplace, announced on the 4th that it has significantly reduced its workforce.

Founder and CEO Devin Finzer said on X (formerly Twitter) that the company has "reviewed its corporate culture, services, and technology from the ground up," and mentioned that the significant reduction in employees is part of a new business expansion.

He also revealed that the new business will be "OpenSea 2.0." According to Finzer, OpenSea 2.0 will be a major upgrade in terms of services such as infrastructure technology, reliability, speed, quality, and experience. In order to respond quickly, the company plans to set up and operate a small team.

Going forward, OpenSea will continue to support its existing services while conducting public testing of OpenSea 2.0.

OpenSea also significantly reduced its workforce last year in response to the slump in the cryptocurrency market. Although the exact number of cuts has not been disclosed this time, it is possible that nearly half of the employees have been fired.

Currently, the cryptocurrency market is on the rise, but the NFT market as a whole remains far from its former boom.

Amid this, OpenSea's market share has plummeted with the emergence of the NFT marketplace Blur, launched in October last year. It has lost its top share and is in a slump.

Blur has introduced an aggregator function that allows transactions across multiple marketplaces, and has been well-received by users. In addition, it has no transaction fees, and issues its own token, BLUR, which is a strategy that sets it apart from other NFT marketplaces, and this is the reason why it has gained support.

In April of this year, OpenSea released "OpenSea Pro" as an NFT marketplace for professionals to compete with Blur, but as it releases OpenSea 2.0 in the future, it will be important to see how it can regain users while still being unique.

Reference:Announcement
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