Filecoin Developer Protocol Labs Fires 21% of Workforce

Protocol Labs, the creator of decentralised file storage network Filecoin, has announced that 21% of its staff will be laid off.

On Friday, Protocol Labs CEO Juan Benet made the announcement via a blog post titled "Focusing our strategy to weather crypto winter".

"I’m saddened to share that today we must part ways with a number of valued friends and colleagues at PL," Benet says to opens his letter addressed to "Labbers."

Citing "an extremely challenging economic downturn, high inflation leading to high interest rates, low investment, and tougher markets", Benet said that "macro winter" worsened crypto winter.

In order to "weather the macro and crypto winter", Benet said Protocol Labs teams had already made significant cost cuts.

Benet stated that further cost reductions were necessary to combat the extended winter.

A total of 89 jobs, accounting for 21% of Protocol Labs' workforce, will be cut. "We’ve had to focus our headcount against the most impactful and business critical efforts," Benet said.

Optimistic outlook

Nonetheless, Protocol Labs remains optimistic, and plans to expand significantly. "We already empower tens of millions of people world-wide with more resilient networks, and we’re on a path to reach billions," Benet writes. "Sometimes we face tough setbacks, but we forge ahead because our work matters.

Protocol Labs' job cut news follows a slew of redundancy announcements. Last month, Crypto.com slashed its global workforce by 20%.

Consensys is also letting go of 100 employees, while Coinbase is axing 20% of its workforce, or about 950 staff. Around 29,000 jobs have been cut in the crypto industry since April 2022, according to Coindesk's estimates.