Polygon to lay off 100 employees amid prolonged crypto winter

Representative image.

Polygon, a platform for Ethereum scaling and infrastructure development, announced on February 21 that it is laying off 100 people, or 20% of its workforce as part of a broader company restructuring, amid prolonged crypto winter.

Impacted employees will each receive three months of severance pay, regardless of their level or tenure at Polygon Labs.

"The treasury remains healthy, with a balance of more than $250 million and more than 1.9 billion MATIC, and we have crystallized our strategy for the next several years to help drive mass adoption of web3 by scaling Ethereum" the company said in a blogpost.

A big part of this strategy includes unifying all of the company's teams under Polygon Labs to drive more growth, co-founder Sandeep Nailwal said on Twitter on February 21.

Polygon had raised $450 million in a funding round led by Sequoia India with participation from more than 40 major venture capital firms including Tiger Global, SoftBank, and Galaxy Digital in February 2022.

Founded by Nailwal, Jaynti Kanani, and Anurag Arjun in late 2017, the firm had announced a corporate restructuring in January 2023 that consolidated several of its business units under Polygon Labs. However, it had mentioned these changes won't have any impact on the community, the protocols or day-to-day operations of Polygon Labs.

Polygon Labs is a group of companies, owned by Polygon Foundation, that comprises all employees who participate in the Polygon ecosystem, both in the further development of Polygon and in growth of the ecosystem. The entity owns the funds used in the organisation as well as the assets developed and created by the firm.

Following this change, Polygon had sunset the “Polygon Studios” brand. Ryan Wyatt, who leads the business team at Polygon Labs, is serving as its president, the company said. Wyatt had joined the firm as the CEO of Polygon Studios in January 2022.

Polygon Foundation is a Cayman Islands-based foundation that has no owners. Several of Polygon co-founders are members of the board of directors on the foundation dedicated to "supporting Polygon and Polygon Labs". Polygon Foundation does not control Polygon or lead its community, the company said.

Meanwhile, Polygon is the name of the series of blockchain protocols that have been developed or are in development.

"It is decentralized technology existing at the behest of validators and other third parties. Polygon neither has, nor could have, any employees since it represents a series of decentralized, and generally open source, technology" the firm said in January 2023.

"Our departing teammates have played a historic part in building the Polygon ecosystem to be the globally recognized platform that it is today. These individuals will always be a part of the 0xPolygon community and we sincerely thank every one of them" Nailwal said on Twitter on February 21.