Polygon Lays Off 20% Of Its Workforce As Part Of Consolidation Process

Ethereum Layer-2 scaling startup Polygon has laid off around 20% of its workforce, or 100 employees, as part of a restructuring exercise amid the ongoing crypto winter.

“Earlier this year, we consolidated multiple business units under Polygon Labs. As part of this process, we’re sharing the difficult news that we’ve reduced our team by 20% impacting multiple teams and about 100 positions,” the startup said in a blog post.

The laid off employees will receive three months of severance pay, regardless of their level or tenure at the startup, it added.

Founded in 2017 by Anurag Arjun, Jaynti Kanani, Mihailo Bjelic and Sandeep Nailwal, Mumbai-based Polygon is a blockchain scalability platform.

In the blog post, Polygon said that it has crystallised its strategy for the next 5 years to drive mass adoption of Web3 by scaling Ethereum, and added that its treasury remains healthy with a balance of over $250 Mn and over 1.9 Bn MATIC tokens.

The layoffs come almost a year after Polygon raised $450 Mn in a funding round, led by Sequoia Capital India. The round also saw participation from over 40 major VC firms including SoftBank, Galaxy Digital, Galaxy Interactive, Tiger Global, Republic Capital and others.

With the layoffs, Polygon has joined Indian startups such as BYJU’S, Chargebee, Cars24, LEAD, Ola, OYO, and Meesho, which have fired employees amid the funding winter.

On Monday, it was reported that community and security management startup MyGate laid off 30% of its employees.

As per Inc42’s layoff tracker, Indian startups have laid off over 22,000 employees since 2022 so far.

The funding raised by Indian startups declined 79.6% to $941 Mn in January 2023 from $4.6 Bn in January 2022.