Algorand Foundation Cuts 25% of Staff as Crypto Industry Layoffs Grow

The organization behind the layer-1 network Algorand has laid off 25% of its staff as a result of crypto’s continued slide and macroeconomic uncertainty. 

Details about how many individuals were affected were not shared. A representative for the foundation did not immediately respond to Decrypt’s request for comment. 

“These employees have been best-in-class contributors to this ecosystem and to the Foundation, and this was an incredibly tough decision,” the organization posted on X. 

“We believe that we now have a more sustainable alignment of Algorand Foundation resources with the protocol’s long-term business, technology, and ecosystem priorities,” it added.

The proof-of-stake network was designed by Turing Award-winning cryptography expert Silvio Micali and launched in 2019, but it has struggled to maintain prominence in the crypto world while its native token—ALGO—trades nearly 98% off its 2019 all-time high of $3.56. 

Recently changing hands at $0.09, the token last traded above $1.00 in January 2022, according to data from CoinGecko. 

Nevertheless, the foundation is still “fully focused on our mission of financial empowerment and the continued development and growth of the Algorand protocol, network, and ecosystem,” its announcement says. 

The network’s Q4 transparency report indicates quarterly transaction growth of 4.7% while real-world asset (RWA) values jumped to $109 million on the blockchain, a jump of 2.9%. 

Current data from RWA.xyz, a real-world asset analytics platform, currently ranks the network 19th overall among blockchains in terms of RWA values, at $83 million—about 190x below the value of RWAs on Ethereum. 

The firm’s layoff decision adds to a string of recent headcount reductions in the crypto industry. Last week, OP Labs—the team behind Ethereum layer-2 network Optimism—announced it was letting go 20 employees in a bid to narrow its focus. A day later, PIP Labs, the team behind Story Protocol, announced it had parted with 10% of its workforce. 

Those decisions followed a larger cut from publicly traded crypto exchange Gemini, which laid off around 25% of its staff as it embraced efficiency gains from artificial intelligence. The firm later parted with three executives as well. And Jack Dorsey’s payments firm Block laid off 4,000 employees in February, though it’s unclear how many of those were focused on the firm’s various Bitcoin initiatives.

Despite the layoffs, the Algorand Foundation’s website still maintains two job postings for roles in community management and business development.