Matter Labs to Reduce ZKsync Developer Workforce by 16%

The CEO of Matter Labs, the company behind the ZKsync protocol, Alex Gluchowski, has announced a 16% reduction in staff.

I just sent this message to the Matter Labs team:

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Today, I’m sharing the hardest change we had to make in the 6-year history of Matter Labs. We are restructuring the organization and parting ways with many amazing team members (~16% of the team). We’ve already reached out…

— Alex G. (∎, ∆) (@gluk64) September 3, 2024

According to the CEO, the company has taken steps to adapt to “different types of technologies and support” now required by the L2 project.

“We conducted extensive organizational planning. It became clear that the talents and roles we have today do not fully meet our needs,” noted Gluchowski.

According to the company profile on LinkedIn, it employs up to 200 people. Thus, about 30 individuals will be affected by the layoffs.

In 2021-2022, ZKsync raised $450 million in investments. 

In June, the project conducted an airdrop of 3.6 million ZK tokens. Following the large-scale distribution, the project’s key metrics declined significantly. 

The chart below shows the daily transaction dynamics in the ZKsync Era network:

The market capitalization of ZK initially exceeded $1 billion, but it now stands at less than $400 million. 

Earlier, the ZKsync airdrop faced criticism from the community, as only 13% of the 6 million unique wallets were eligible, many of which turned out to be “Sybil” accounts.