The NEAR Foundation, supporting the NEAR Protocol ecosystem, announced a workforce reduction of about 40%. Illia Polosukhin, co-founder of NEAR Protocol and CEO of the NEAR Foundation, stated that the layoffs would primarily affect marketing, business development, and community teams, impacting 35 employees.
Polosukhin noted the decision followed a review that identified inefficiencies within the Foundation’s operations. The review led to a decision to significantly reduce the core team to focus on a narrower range of more impactful activities.
Despite the workforce reduction, Polosukhin emphasized the Foundation’s treasury remains strong, with $285 million in cash, NEAR tokens valued at $1.1 billion, and $70 million in investments and credits.
The layoffs come despite NEAR Protocol’s significant growth in 2023, hosting some of Web3’s top applications and a record number of daily users. Polosukhin had previously highlighted the ecosystem’s substantial growth, with over 7 million monthly active accounts and an average of more than 2 million transactions per day.
Data shows a 15-fold increase in daily transactions throughout 2023, and a similar rise in daily new wallet addresses. Polosukhin asserts that the layoffs are part of a longer-term decentralization plan, suggesting the Foundation’s footprint will continue to shrink as the ecosystem becomes more decentralized and various nodes become more active across the network and ecosystem.