• Dapper Labs, the NFT collectibles company behind NBA Top Shot, recently announced its third round of job cuts within a year, resulting in 51 employees leaving the organization.
• The decision was made to ensure a lean and efficient Dapper Labs in light of the broader decline witnessed by the NFT market.
• CEO Roham Gharegozlou emphasized that despite these layoffs, Dapper Labs is still financially strong due to its $305 million funding round earlier this year.
Dapper Labs Reduces Staff By 51 Employees
Dapper Labs, the non-fungible token (NFT) collectibles company behind NBA Top Shot, recently bid farewell to an additional 51 employees as part of their third round of staff layoffs within a year. In an announcement by Roham Gharegozlou on July 13th, the company’s CEO revealed that the decision was “incredibly difficult” but necessary to ensure a lean and efficient Dapper Labs. Despite this restructure, Gharegozlou stressed that Dapper Labs has ample financial resources due to their successful $305 million funding round earlier this year.
Rise of NFTs & NBA Top Shot
Dapper Labs rose to prominence in 2017 with the launch of CryptoKitties, introducing the concept of NFTs through blockchain-based collectible characters. In 2020 they launched another venture: NBA Top Shot; powered by their own Flow blockchain, it allows users to trade digital assets based on video clips from NBA games. After seeing success with both projects and raising $305 million in March 2021 for a post-money valuation of $2.6 billion – things began taking a downturn for Dapper Labs.
NFT Market Slump
In April 2022 reports highlighted an abundance of sellers creating an imbalance in the NFT market – leading to dropping prices and less interest in trading digital assets across platforms like NBA Top Shot and CryptoKitties. This slump had serious implications for Dapper Lab’s profits and forced them into making job cuts as part of their restructuring process over several months throughout 2022-2023. Despite these difficult decisions however, Gharegozlou reiterated that they remain fully committed to building amazing products for their core communities while pushing forward together sustainably as a company.
Conclusion
Despite facing uncertain times amidst changes in the digital asset trading landscape – Dapper Lab’s commitment towards its core communities remains firm even after letting go more than 50 colleagues amid pandemic pressures and restructuring operations for long term sustainability..