ConsenSys Reduces Staff by 11% To Focus Resources on Its Core Business.
ConsenSys, the organization that owns MetaMask, is laying off 11% of its staff, blaming previous collapses for the “uncertain market conditions” that led to this decision.
The CEO of blockchain company ConsenSys, Joseph Lubin, wrote in a blog post on January 18 that “poorly behaved” individuals in centralized finance had thrown a “wide pall on our ecosystem that we will all need to work through.”
The move, according to Lubin, would affect 96 people and is a part of attempts to concentrate resources on the company’s core industries.
Lex Sokolin, the chief cryptoeconomics officer of ConsenSys, said that the industry was still far from mass adoption globally. “We’re still in a place where this is emerging technology. It’s not entirely well understood by the whole public,” he said.
During the previous bull run, over 30 million people per month used MetaMask to access DeFi protocols, create and trade non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and engage with decentralized autonomous organizations, said ConsenSys (DAOs). That is a drop in the ocean internationally, although being encouraging.
“MetaMask has 30 million monthly users and in Web3, there are maybe 500 million addresses,” Sokolin said. “But that’s not five billion people.”
Asked when cryptocurrency will become widely accepted, Sokolin responded that it all depended on whether it had enough compelling use cases and a strong ecosystem to sustain it.
He also questioned the notion that it would arise from clearer regulations and a better customer experience. “They’re not the things that people say [such as] ‘when is UI going to be better’, or ‘when is regulation going to make it better.’ Those are important, but […] they’re not the catalyst,” said Sokolin, adding:
“The catalyst of things is, one: Is there going to be enough stuff to buy on Web3 that I want to own?”
“If I live in Web3 and my avatar and my social media and my data and my status as a person, prestige, community belonging […] is tied to me owning digital objects […] you’re gonna inevitably get to a place where everyone wants to be doing commercial transactions in Web3.”
“So for me, economic adoption is the most important thing. Because it’s going to pull the rest of it into the ecosystem.”
According to Lubin’s most recent post, the organization will concentrate on streamlining its workforce and concentrating its operations on its core value drivers, such as the end-user custody solution MetaMask, the developer platform Infura, and “new offerings” that expand the Web3 commerce and DAO communities.