Axie Infinity Creator Cuts 21% of Staff Despite Year of ‘Valuable Growth'

Co-founder Nguyen Thanh Trung said the “tough” move will enable them to sharpen their focus on core products.

Updated Nov 25, 2024, 6:14 a.m. Published Nov 25, 2024, 6:13 a.m.

Sky Mavis, the web3 gaming firm behind Axie Infinity, laid off 21% of its workforce last week.

The web3 firm’s co-founder and CEO Trung Nguyen said on X on Saturday that the layoffs were not related to the company’s budget or financial health.

“Instead, it is a strategic move that allows for a sharper focus and positioning Sky Mavis for hypergrowth in 2025 and beyond,” he said.

According to Nguyen, the move came despite the year being “one of valuable growth and evolution”. Going forward the company will focus on its core products rather than trying to build products for all users, he said. The web3 creator will concentrate on its Ronin Wallet and Waypoint, Mavis Marketplace, Axie Infinity, Web3 game publishing, and expanding the Ronin Network for more builders. It is also working on a new Axie game.

In 2023, co-founder Aleksander Larsen said in an interview with Finoverse that the company had 250 employees at its main base in Singapore and across its subsidiaries in Vietnam, the U.S. and Norway. Sky Mavis did not immediately respond to CoinDesk's request for total headcount or the number of people impacted.

Despite bitcoin hitting new all time highs over the past few weeks and the prospect of a more succinct regulatory regime for crypto in the U.S. following the re-election of Donald Trump, several crypto companies have announced layoffs over the past month. Cryptocurrency exchange Kraken laid off 400 people, or 30% of its staff, on Oct. 31, according to tech layoff tracker Layoffs.fyi.

DYDX also cut 25% of its staff at the end of last month, and Consensys laid off a further 20%, or 162 people. Cuts have also taken place this year at Matter Labs, Polygon, Fireblocks, Sorare, Moonpay, Paxos and several other companies.