by Reza Ali
Sky Mavis, the company behind the Axie Infinity game and Ronin blockchain, has announced the release of 21 percent of the staff under a new restructuring plan that will help us prepare the company for the future.
2024 has been a transformative year for Sky Mavis. The Ronin Wallet surpassed 10 million downloads. Today, Ronin is the third most used Blockchain in the world with more than 1.1 million daily active addresses.
As crypto-friendly policies gain traction, we anticipate a wave of…
— trungfinity.ron (@trungfinity) November 23, 2024
In an X (former Twitter) post, company co-founder and CEO Trung Nguyen confirmed this decision, explaining it was not due to financial problems or poor performance results but rather a change of objectives.
Nguyen said it’s a shift of focus to align funding with our strategic plan better. He also said they would help the affected employees find another job and be compensated. Sky Mavis, however, insisted it is in great financial health and repeated its commitment to its projects currently in the pipeline.
This news arrives amid the company’s growing and evolving efforts in the Web3 space. The funds realized by the layoffs will be put into a game named Axie Infinity. Unfortunately, more details of the latest game have not been revealed. Nguyen, however, said the game would fit in with the company’s diversification strategy and ride the popularity of the token-based Axie Infinity brand.
Nguyen Justifies Layoffs as Strategic Move to Boost Agility and Growth
Nguyen was comfortable with making layoffs because of the thought behind them: to create agility and better focus on the firm’s products. Besides the new game, the company will expand the Ronin Wallet and Mavis Marketplace and create another novel proposal: web3 game publishing and expanding the Ronin network.
Nguyen said the restructuring was done strategically, not to cut costs, though it means they have a leaner team that can devote its energies to growth in 2025 and after. With this as its guiding principle, the company attempts to control its costs to achieve the competitiveness of its products and services.
However, financial problems are not linked to recruitment termination. Market entry for Sky Mavis is rough. Axie Infinity tokens and NFTs attached to them have lost much of their value compared to the prices recorded at the start of 2021.
In 2022, Axie Infinity’s data from DappRadar showed Axies, NFTs in the game, holding more than $700 in floor price. That figure has gone down drastically today to $0.33. Similarly, another crypto, such as Axie Infinity, had a high of $164.90 in 2020 and is now at $8.07.
A second token associated with the game is a Smooth Love Potion, SLP, which increased from $0.39 in 2021 to $0.0036. It is not unusual for Web3 gaming businesses to experience significant trouble keeping players and staying afloat with token values.
Despite the tokens and NFTs associated with Ronin going down, the Ronin Network’s Native token has some good news. But the Ronin token is now trading at $1.77 after surviving some market turbulence, down from $4.45 last year in March 2024.
Sky Mavis is now changing its strategy in line with the market conditions; the new Axle Infinity game and other important programs, such as Healthy M&A, are clear proof. With more developments coming into the Web3 gaming world, Sky Mavis will not stay left behind to replace the lacking with what future setups can accept in the best way.
This paper shows that as the company attempts to realize its internal reorganization, its innovative nature and capabilities will play a big role in future business success. Sky Mavis is now ready to adapt its business model and cut its staff to foster new growth after the late cycle of the web3 bull, which has seen other businesses in the Web3 space struggle.
#blockchain #crypto, #decentralized, #distributed, #ledger